Aesthetics versus Ethics: Judgement day for contemporary jewellery
The other day I found Benjamin Lignel’s recent post in Art Jewelry Forum, ‘Just what is it that makes today’s art galleries so different, so appealing?’ It was a teasing title. A quick Google revealed its source as a collage by Richard Hamilton, satirising 1950s consumerism. So what makes the art gallery so appealing for [...]
From there to here, with a bouquet–Vicki Mason jewellery
Catalogue essay for the Vicki Mason exhibition Botanical Fictions, e.g.etal, Melbourne and Gallery Bilk, Queanbeyan, Australia, 2011 The other day I renewed my driver’s license. Uploading my identity into the matrix was a strangely disembodying experience. Accompanied by the clatter of scans and clicks, I made my way to the front of the queue before [...]
Pieces Activate
Pieces of Fate is an exhibition of beautiful pendants. But it also taps into a very mysterious quality that once played such an important role in jewellery practice—luck. As the Germans say, ‘Jeder ist seines Glückes Schmied’—everyone makes their own luck. So how do you make luck? Or is it something that can be made [...]
Literary Pathfinding: The Work of Popular Life Constructors
[Kevin Murray 'Finding literary paths: The work of popular life constructors' In T.R. Sarbin (ed.) Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct New York: Praeger (1986)] Social actors often need a past to satisfy the requirements of many different dramatic situations. These situations can vary from the extraordinary ‑ the television show “This Is [...]
Stop the Moats: Recent work by Cecile Williams and Nick Mangan
‘He who lives on an island should not make an enemy of the ocean.’ Berlin proverb The interregnum that followed the 2010 Federal election drew attention to the voices of Independents, speaking free of the constraints of party machines. Refreshing views came to the surface. During his campaign for election to the electorate of Port [...]
Designing with the Neighbours in Mind: Unlimited Asia Pacific
Unlimited Asia Pacific is a platform for the Queensland state government to join Victoria as a leading force in Australia’s emergent design economy. While the Victorian State of Design Festival is focused on state-based activity, Unlimited triennial builds on the work of its visual arts sister, the Asia Pacific Triennial, to position design within the [...]
Ten Years Before and After
Lecture to the Chicago Institute of Art 3 October 2007 as part of a series associated with the Object of Labor publication An evaluation of the role played by collectives in recent craft It’s a great pleasure to be back in Chicago. I was shocked to realise that it has been ten years since I [...]
Between the Wheel and the Mobile Phone: Ceramics in a network age
Thanks to Jane Sawyer ‘Between the wheel and the mobile phone: ceramics in a network age: Keynote address’ Verge Ceramics Conference (2006) Congratulations to the organisers on what’s been a most stimulating conference thus far. I am grateful to Garth Clark for laying out the dilemma in contemporary ceramics so eloquently in his keynote address, [...]
Painterliness in contemporary glass art
Delivered as the Strattman lecture, Adelaide GAS Conference, 9 May 2005 At this moment, Australia plays host to an international gathering of glass artists. It would seem remiss, then, not to mention one of Australia’s most noticeable contributions to the international world of glass art. The Peter Carey novel Oscar and Lucinda used glass blowing [...]
The Plinth in the Age of Digital Reproduction
‘The Plinth in the Age of Digital Reproduction’ Keynote address at Localities conference at Northumbria University, UK (2003) … that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. Walter Benjamin ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’, in Illuminations (trans. H. Zohn) London: Fontana, [...]
keep looking »