Overheard at Collect art fair: how to disrupt the art world, and more...
12 March 2021
Artist and author Edmund de Waal seen in his studio. Photo: Tom Jamieson
To kick off Collect art fair – taking place online for the first time ever this year – we assembled a stellar cast of artists, makers, movers and shakers for our series of spirit-lifting talks. If you missed them, luckily you can play catch up. Read on to discover the most ‘disruptive thing’ you can do in the art world according Edmund de Waal, how craft could save our high streets and why makers enjoy losing control.
The Fielding Talk: In conversation with Magdalene Odundo DBE
What’s the most important part of a vessel for the world’s top potters? For the legendary ceramic artist Magdalene Odundo, it’s the inside that counts. ‘It is the womb that contains all my thoughts and imaginations,’ she tells Gus Casely-Hayford, the V&A East director and Crafts columnist in this talk. She also reveals how she makes her impossibly perfect pots, a process which involves a continual embrace, ‘like cradling a child’. Meanwhile, the pair discuss the legacy of colonialism and the traumas of systemic racism, with Casely-Hayford offering a dose of optimism, suggesting that ‘one of the ways to reflect on the pain, transcend some of the areas of difference’ and ‘perhaps project forward into the possibility of real hope – is through the arts’. Watch to find out more...
The Collectors: Modern craft in the hands of interior designers
The past year has seen us all spending more time in our homes, surrounded by our possessions, than ever before. So it’s no surprise that a thoughtful, story-led approach to interior design is increasing in popularity. ‘I think the process and the narrative is almost as important as the finished product,’ designer Chris Cox of Cox London tells House & Garden editor Hatta Byng. Designer Hugh Leslie goes a step further, describing the decorative arts as making the difference between a ‘space that is liveable and somewhere that isn’t’. Meanwhile, Studio Indigo’s Melissa Hamilton meditates on how crafted objects connect us to the humanity of their makers. ‘It’s completely personal,’ she says.
Breaking the Boundaries of Craft: LOEWE Foundation
What’s the role of control versus chance in craft? For Korean textile artist Yeonsoon Chang, letting go offers a chance for creative adventure. ‘It is painful to lose control while designing, but it is also an opportunity to find alternatives to solving problems,’ she tells journalist and art historian Anatxu Zabalbeascoa in this talk with LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize finalists. Portuguese jeweller Patricia Domingues agreeds. Discussing her carefully cracked art jewellery, she says: ‘While I'm provoking these fractures, what I do is somehow lose part of my control. What I'm doing in fact is to almost co-create with the materials.’ For Japanese ceramic artist Takeshi Yasuda, it’s about pushing what’s possible: ‘I am preoccupied with my own perception of limitation.’
Edmund de Waal in conversation with Glenn Adamson
‘This last painful year has been a stripping away of all the apparatus of professional life, and ending up with a laptop – and your hands,’ Edmund de Waal says in his digital appearance at Collect art fair. In today's cultural landscape, craft has radical qualities, he adds. ‘You’ve got a completely homogenised art world: what’s the most chaotic, the most disruptive thing you can do? It’s to make a domestic object. It still remains a powerfully, engagingly, complicatedly beautiful and lyrical thing to do.’ The artist and author chats with Crafts’ editor-at-large and curator Glenn Adamson, who reiterates the importance of: ‘Wherever you have technical innovation, you have craft; wherever you have artistic experimentation, you have craft – for the simple reason that there’s no way to do things properly the first time than by hand.’
The maker revolution: Can craft save our cities?
Our high streets are facing more pressure than ever before. In this talk, Crafts magazine’s panellists discuss the role that making could play in reenergising our cities post-Covid 19. ‘Art is about creating food for the soul, and the more people that can take part in that, the better their souls are going to be,’ declares Coventry 2021, UK City of Culture creative director Chenine Bhathena, pointing to the joyously colourful spaces by fellow panellist Morag Myerscough. Annie Warburton of Cockpit Arts asserted that real investment is needed in order to achieve this goal. ‘Often developers are looking for instant craft character and community, but a meaningful community takes time to develop – it’s not just a case of sprinkling a blacksmith or two among the coffee chains.’ Despite the long-term challenge, companies are increasingly stepping up, believes Brookfield Properties’ Caitlin Warfield. ‘There is more and more appetite for businesses to infuse culture and craft into their day to day [work] because they’re starting to see how important it is to mental health, wellness and sustainability.’ Hear, hear...
