Updates from Rosy Greenlees
15 November 2011
Looking back to my last update, we were getting into the swing of an autumn packed with events to celebrate our 40th anniversary. The Power of Making exhibition had just opened at the V&A and we were looking forward to Lost in Lace in Birmingham and Block Party at the London Design Festival. The second year of Firing Up was imminently at hand and Crafts Magazine’s bumper 40th anniversary issue had recently hit the news-stands.
It feels as if an extraordinary amount has happened in the intervening weeks – all helping to take the current high profile of craft even higher.
Power of Making pulls in the crowds…
Power of Making has exceeded all expectations of visitor numbers. It is turning out to be a blockbuster of an exhibition with 147,000 visitors in September and October, and we are cautiously optimistic about breaking a few records by the time it closes on 2 January 2012.
If there is a downside it is, of course, queues and the number of people trying to see the exhibition at peak times. Nevertheless, I do hope you will be able to see it – and enjoy it. It is having a great impact on perceptions of craft, causing writers, commentators and critics to review their ideas.
To single out one or two, the Daily Telegraph’s deputy art critic noted,
“What these objects share is a certain hand-made, heartfelt, visibly human aesthetic – and if that personal touch vanishes, then we’ll be cast adrift in a jerry-built limbo of branding, cheap manufacturing and mass-market consumerism”.
Tom Sutcliffe, on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Review succinctly summed it up as “a concrete manifesto for the virtues of hands-on skill”.
We’re delighted for our partner the V&A, for Power of Making’s tireless curator Daniel Charny, for ourselves (of course!) but most of all for makers whether in the show or not – because without makers there is no craft. Achieving recognition for makers and their work is central to our goals and it’s fantastic to have such a highlight to celebrate our 40th anniversary.
More here and here.
Still at the V&A, it was good to see the first three programmes in the BBC/V&A series Handmade in Britain presenting a journey through the history of industrial and studio ceramics, culminating in the contrasting styles of two of our most distinguished potters, Grayson Perry and Edmund de Waal and including footage of COLLECT 2011 along the way. We are working with the V&A to maximise the digital legacy of the programmes on both our websites and look forward to the return of the series later in the year.
… Lost in Lace pulls out all the stops…
And now for another highlight – and it is another exhibition. On 29 October, Lost in Lace: New approaches by UK and international artists, opened in Birmingham’s magnificent Gas Hall where it runs until 19 February 2012. The first exhibition borne out of our Fifty:Fifty Programme and, before that, our Spark Plug research programme, it is a tour de force from curator Lesley Millar, of the University for the Creative Arts, from our Fifty:Fifty partner, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery and from our own team.
Lost in Lace brings twenty UK and international artists to Birmingham to present installations exploring lace, space and boundaries at a scale that only a gallery like the Gas Hall could allow. I am loath to pick personal favourites but I must mention the surprising delicacy that 40,000 Swarovski crystals can achieve as used by Atelier Manferdini to create Inverted Crystal Cathedral, the extraordinary power of Tamar Frank’s phosphorescent thread-filled room, the dark fairy-tale effectiveness of Chiharu Shiota’s dresses enmeshed in their three-dimensional network of black threads and the quiet power of Lise Bjørne Linnert’s silk interventions into wire fences and boundaries in conflict zones around the world.
Culture 24 commented: “The Crafts Council has been busy doing what it does best in its 40th year – changing the perceptions of those they represent by showing off some of the best contemporary practitioners in the world – and this exhibition running through the Gas Hall at BMAG continues their quest.
Lost in Lace is, without doubt, a truly important exhibition and I urge you to see it. And it was equally important – and encouraging – to hear Simon Ofield-Kerr, newly installed as Vice-Chancellor of University for the Creative Arts, publicly affirm UCA’s continuing commitment to contemporary craft at the Lost in Lace private view. Good news indeed!
Visit the Lost in Lace website here. Find out more about the exhibition and download the Lost in Lace app.
And see Craft Magazine’s blog here.
… and Block Party pulls in to Smiths Row for its regional launch
Meanwhile, our new touring show Block Party is about to begin eighteen months on the road following its London launch at designjunction as part of the London Design Festival. I am looking forward to its regional launch at Smiths Row, Bury St Edmunds from 14 January to 10 March 2012
Block Party explores the alchemy of the centuries-old skill of tailoring through work by artists who push pattern-cutting beyond the fashion garment. Curated by Lucy Orta, Professor of Art, Fashion and the Environment at London College of Fashion, it includes pieces by Yinka Shonibare, Shelley Fox, Charlotte Hodes, Dai Rees and Hormazd Narilewalla, all of whom take pattern-cutting as a starting point to produce sculpture, ceramics, textile, moving image and collage.
More here.
Finally, Origin showcased work by a wide range of makers to 17,000 visitors, while the Liberty Selects showcases provided a great snapshot of the show to passers-by through the work selected by Liberty buyer Michelle Alger for the windows encircling the exterior of the site. Inside, Lux Craft, generously supported by Nokia, provided makers with a wonderful opportunity to showcase their work with light in a series of larger-scale installations.
Work has continued at full steam elsewhere in the organisation too.
Hothouse Year Two is under way…
Hothouse – our professional development programme for emerging makers – has entered its second year with 28 makers already deeply engaged in the programme working in three cohorts – jewellery and silver in partnership with The Goldsmiths’ Institute, London; textiles in partnership with Arts University College Bournemouth, Bath Spa University and University College Falmouth, based in the South West, and a third mixed discipline cohort in partnership with Cleveland College of Art & Design, Design Initiative and Designed & Made, based in the North
Hothouse showcases both the importance of partnerships, bringing together craft organisations, development agencies and higher education institutions to work with us to support makers in a key stage of their career. Hothouse encourages makers to work and think differently equipping them with tools to run an entrepreneurial and sustainable business.
This second intake is, again, an exciting group, working across a range of materials and techniques from centuries-old leather boiling to CAD embroidery with the unifying factor or their skill and imagination to bring them together. It will be fascinating to watch them develop.
Meanwhile, congratulations to the group of makers from the first year of Hothouse who developed and presented an exhibition following their joint journey through the programme. Portraits in the Making was shown at Pitzhanger Manor in September and October as part of London Design Festival and drew on the core theme of Sir John Soane’s vision of Pitzhanger Manor as ‘a sort of portrait’. It was great to see this first cohort use the inspiration of both Hothouse and Soane’s building to such effect.
… and so is Year Two of Firing Up…
We are also in the middle of launching the second year of Firing Up, whilst simultaneously celebrating the first year with displays both at the British Ceramics Biennial and at the {participating} higher education institutions that participated in the first year of the scheme.
Tristram Hunt MP cut short his attendance at party conference to speak at the launch of the Staffordshire University cluster in Stoke-on-Trent and now we are very much looking forward to the launches of the Sunderland and Manchester clusters in December and the Bath cluster in January. Meanwhile we continue to celebrate the first year with a recent exhibition of the Liverpool cluster’s work due to be followed by an event celebrating the culmination of work by the London cluster at Central St Martins new home in Kings Cross – and both following the Plymouth cluster’s showcase at the Contemporary Craft Fair at Bovey Tracey in the summer.
In addition to attending the Firing Up launch, I was delighted to have the opportunity to visit the second British Ceramics Biennial which this year was located both in the empty Spode Factory and at the Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent demonstrating the wide range of ceramics practiced both in Stoke but also internationally.
Out and About
It was good to attend Plymouth College of Art’s second Making Futures conference in September where BOP Consulting presented early findings from our new nationwide study of the contemporary craft sector, Craft in an Age of Change (commissioned by us with partners in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and due to be published in the coming months) and Craft and the Creative Life-cycle, a new paper drawing on our 2010 Making Value research.
Read our report of the conference here.
Events
As usual, autumn has brought an almost overwhelming cornucopia of events from the London Design Festival where, in addition to our own events, my overwhelming impression was still of the increased references to contemporary craft and the handmade, to Frieze with its preponderance of works by Tracy Emin, including a new tapestry with West Dean Tapestry Studio to follow Black Cat exhibited at {Collect} COLLECT in May.
It was good to see LDF celebrated in Downing Street at a reception hosted by Ed Vaizey MP. Our Chair Joanna Foster and I were delighted to attend to fly the flag for craft and I also managed to get to Goldsmiths’ Fair and to the launch of The Culture Capital Exchange, one of the four Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy announced recently.
Back at the V&A, it was a pleasure to speak at a launch event for The Balvenie Distillery, where guests were able to see Power of Making and enjoy a different type of craftsmanship at a tutored whisky tasting. Heady stuff!
My colleague Claire West and members of her team attended the annual Museums Association conference; Craftsmanship in the Digital Age, a panel debate with speakers including Janice Blackburn, Rabih Hage, organiser Silverlining’s Mark Boddington, Henrietta Thompson from Wallpaper*, and Crafts Magazine editor Grant Gibson; Pavilion of Art and Design alongside LDF and the British Ceramics Biennial.
Visits
Alongside trips to Birmingham and Stoke, I visited Norwich to catch up with news and events at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts and with Norwich University College of the Arts – one higher education institution where textiles are certainly thriving.
Meetings
Notable meetings included the opportunity to discuss the role of contemporary craft with Barry Sheerman MP, Chair of the Associate Parliamentary Design and Innovation Groups; with Richard Green, Chief Executive of the Design and Technology Association; and to catch up with colleagues at the Design Council and the Learning and Skills Improvement Service.
Alan Haydon
Along with others who knew him, we were very sad to hear of the death of Alan Haydon, who for two years was Director of Development at the Crafts Council in the 90’s but who latterly is best known for his transformation of the De La Warr Pavilion as its Director from 1999 onwards. He will be much missed.
Design Nation
I am so pleased that the legacy of Peta Levi’s extraordinary work in Design Nation and The Design Trust will continue with its transfer from London Metropolitan University to Andrew Tanner and Patricia van den Akker respectively and that both will be re-launched in 2012.
Crafts Council Patrons
And finally, my thanks to Kate Malone for allowing us to host an extremely enjoyable event for Crafts Council patrons at her studio and to Caroline Broadhead for kindly agreeing to allow us to host our next event at her studio in Finsbury Park following her fascinating collaboration with her daughter Maisie Broadhead at Marsden Woo recently. Find out more about the Crafts Council Patrons here.
