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Craft Curators’ Forum 2010
23-24 September 2010

Speaking at this event:

  • Professor Catherine McDermott

    Crafts Curators’ Forum Chair
    Professor Catherine McDermott

    Course Director MA Curating Contemporary Design, Kingston University in partnership with the Design Museum

    Catherine McDermott heads the School of Design Masters programme at Kingston University and is an advisory board member of New Design Magazine, the Design Journal and part of the Design Council’s Advisory Group Biennial.

    She is the author or co-author of more than 11 books on such topics as the history of design, street style British Design in the 80s, the world’s leading product designers, furniture design and the work of British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood.

    She is a director of the Curating Contemporary Design Research Group and is chair of the university’s prestigious Stanley Picker Gallery. McDermott is also a member of the Design History Society, the Costume History Society, the National Art Collectors Fund and the Museums Association. She has worked as a consultant for, amongst others, the BBC Education Service, the Science Museum, the Design Museum, for the Victoria and Albert’s Twentieth Century Gallery Project and Granada Television. She has curated a number of exhibitions (ranging in content from a celebration of the life and times of Diana, Princess of Wales, through to an exhibition for the French luxury goods company Hermes and an exhibition for the Design Council) as well as regularly writing for a number of design magazines and journals.

    She is currently working on a number of projects in China. She has previously won a British Council competition and her project Dreamlab, launched in September 2009 to over 20 Chinese universities.

  • Louise Shannon

    Digital Programmes at the V&A
    Louise Shannon

    Curator and Deputy Head of Contemporary Programmes, V&A

    Louise Shannon is currently Curator and Deputy Head of the Contemporary Programmes at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Since joining the V&A in 2003, Shannon has worked in various collections in the Museum including Furniture, Textiles and Fashion and the Word and Image Department.

    Past projects include Spectres; When Fashion Turns Back (2005), Twilight; Photography in the Magic Hour (2006) and Volume (2006). She has overseen the management of the Friday Late programme of live events and has developed a series of digital commissions for the Garden.

    Recently she was co-curator of Decode, the first exhibition devoted to digital technologies at the V&A.

    Website: http://www.vam.ac.uk/

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  • Fo Wilson

    Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft
    Fo Wilson

    Artist, designer, writer, independent curator and Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

    Fo Wilson, artist, designer, writer and independent curator, organized the exhibition The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft, which is currently on view at the Fuller Craft Museum in the United States and scheduled to tour. She received a Masters of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design’s Furniture Design program along with a concentration in art, theory and criticism. Wilson’s own work uses the language of furniture to investigate ideas around identity and culture creating furniture-based installations that cross boundaries between art, craft, and design. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her work is included in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York.

    Website: http://fowilson.com/

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  • Ele Carpenter

    Curating Open Source Embroidery
    Ele Carpenter

    Curator, artist and researcher in visual arts and new media culture

    Ele Carpenter is a curator, writer and artist based in London, where she teaches in the MFA Curating at Goldsmiths College. She is currently a Research Fellow at HUMlab in affiliation with BildMuseet at the University of Umeå, Sweden. Her curatorial practice responds to socio-political cultural contexts in collaboration with groups and organisations. Her recent research focuses on the relationship between craft, code and computing. She is curator of the Open Source Embroidery project and is currently facilitating a new artwork called the Embroidered Digital Common, a distributed embroidery of ‘A Concise Lexicon of / for the Digital Commons’ written by the Raqs Media Collective, 2003.

    Carpenter has worked as Curator at NGCA Sunderland (1997-2002); Associate Curator, at CCA Glasgow (2003-5); and as an independent curator. She completed her PhD on the relationship between politicised socially engaged art and new media art, with CRUMB, University of Sunderland, 2008.

    Website: http://www.elecarpenter.org.uk/

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  • Annabelle Campbell

    New Craft Curation: exploring interpretation and practice at Crafts Council
    Annabelle Campbell

    Exhibitions & Collection Manager, Crafts Council

    Annabelle Campbell currently heads the Exhibitions and Collection Team at the Crafts Council. Specific responsibilities include; exhibition and touring programme which has included Out of the Ordinary with V&A, LabCraft, and OnViewOnline the new online exhibition gallery; partnership development; curatorial initiatives and projects, such as the development of the Spark Plug Curator Awards and CPD programme for curators.

    Annabelle has previously worked at the British Museum, Museum of Reading, V&A and the Geffrye Museum. While in her role at the Geffrye as curator for Twentieth Century and Contemporary, she was responsible for a number of exhibitions including Mies Meets Marx: an installation by Michael Marriott, and Domestic Archaeology amongst others.
    Since its launch in 2000, Annabelle has taught on the MA programme for Curating Contemporary Design run in partnership by Kingston University and the Design Museum.


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  • Max Fraser

    Lab Craft: Digital adventures in contemporary craft
    Max Fraser

    Design author, journalist, curator

    Max Fraser is curator, author and design commentator, working across media including books, magazines, exhibitions, video, and events to broaden the conversation and expand perceptions around contemporary design. He is the editor and publisher of LONDON DESIGN GUIDE.

    Website: http://www.londondesignguide.com/

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  • Professor Janis Jefferies

    To Curate or not to Curate
    Professor Janis Jefferies

    Professor of Visual Arts in the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths University of London

    Janis Jefferies is an artist, writer and curator. She is Professor of Visual Arts and Director of the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles and Artistic Director of Goldsmiths Digital Studios (GDS), Goldsmiths, University of London. GDS is dedicated to collaborations among practicing artists, cultural and media theorists, and innovators in computational media, who together are expanding the boundaries of artistic practice, forging the future of digital technologies and developing new understanding of the interactions between technology and society.

    Recent publications include 2009, Interfaces of Performance, co-editor, Ashgate Publishing; ‘Loving Attention: An outburst of craft in contemporary art’ in Extra/ordinary: Craft Culture and Contemporary Art, Duke University Press, USA, (editor, Maria Buszek, Kansas City Art Institute, USA) and ‘Artists as researchers in a computer mediated culture,’ ed. Dr. Charlie Gere, Ashgate Publishing, will be published in Winter 2010. Jefferies received a 2008-2009 Crafts Council Spark Plug curatorial award for ‘Crafting Geometry’, developed with alumnus May Cornet on the relationship between math, textiles and geometry.

    Website: http://www.doc.gold.ac.uk/staff/JJ.html

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  • Gary Allson

    Woven Wood, a collaboration with Ismini Samanidou
    Gary Allson

    Cornwall based Gary Allson trained at Wimbledon School of Art and the Royal College of Art graduating in 2001 whilst at the RCA Allson specialising in design products. For a number of years he worked in industry including Raffo design Associates and Habitat.

    Allson’s research interests and practice involves the use of digital production and cross discipline collaborations. He combines his practice with teaching at University College Falmouth, exhibitions and commissions. His primary material is timber and through the use of hand processes he develops explorative surfaces and forms that are both functional and ornamental.

    In recent collaboration with textile artist Ismini Samanidou, Allson has explored the combination of digital making methods and translating weave structures into timber surfaces using CNC milled processes.

    Website: http://www.garyallson.co.uk/

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  • Michael Eden

    From Wedgwoodn’t Tureen to latest works and ideas
    Michael Eden

    After 20 years as a studio potter, Michael Eden undertook an MPhil research project at the Royal College of Art to see how his interest in digital design and manufacturing could be developed and combined with the craft skills that he had acquired during his previous experience. Since then, Eden has continued to create a series of pieces, inspired by historical objects and contemporary themes. The work further explores the relationship between hand and digital tools, investigating experimental manufacturing technology and materials. This way of working has allowed him to extend his practice into other areas such as glass and furniture.

    Website: http://www.michael-eden.co.uk/

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See also

  • Crafts Council Collective

    Professional development for makers delivered through five strands.

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