Featuring work by Annette Bellamy, Sonya Clark, David Clarke, Michelle Erickson, Jeffrey Gibson, Jasleen Kaur, Christien Meindertsma, Jonathan James Perry, Katie Schwab and Allison Smith.
Just over four hundred years ago, the Mayflower embarked from Plymouth, England. Many aboard were non-conformists, leaving their homeland for fear that their religious community would otherwise perish. They arrived in what seemed to them a 'new world', but this land was already long inhabited by the Wampanoag people who called it Patuxet. The implications of the Mayflower crossing are so far-reaching they are sometimes difficult to comprehend.
The voyage is both a national origin story for America and, given the widespread devastation of the Indigenous population that resulted, an event to mourn. The distance between these two perspectives can feel vast.
'Another Crossing' charts a course through this abyss. Each participating artist has created work in response to the Mayflower anniversary, utilising only tools, materials and processes that existed in 1620. It's a concept that highlights the sophistication of historic craft practices like beadwork, joinery, metalsmithing, leatherwork and pottery. It also has a metaphorical intention: the art works inhabit two moments in time, stretching across four centuries. They are by turns introspective, outraged, sad, funny, surprising and humane. Collectively, they suggest that the journey undertaken by the Mayflower is still in progress all these years later. We’re still trying to get to a better place. 'Another Crossing' has been developed in partnership between Plymouth College of Art, The Box and Fuller Craft Museum, Massachusetts.