Podcasts
Grace Cochrane Independent Curator, Former Senior Curator, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney,Australia.
This podcast is intended for educational use only.
In the last fifty years, the benchmark for success in the crafts has been primarily in their acceptance as art. Despite sometimes working in limited series, craftspeople have tended to shun associations with processes that imply the impersonality of industrial manufacture. We want evidence of the unique hand of the maker and enjoy emotional attachments with objects made by someone we can identify. At the same time, a new hierarchy has developed round 'design', which has its own infrastructure of brands, promotion and identity.
In Australia and New Zealand, the local marketplace for art-craft is supportive but comparatively small, and we are a long way from collectors in bigger population centres. Design implies links with manufacturing through industry, but for some time both the nature and location of manufacture has been changing rapidly. Mass markets are also far away. The reach of industry is increasingly global, and the handmade has always been so personal and local. Or is it? New technologies, new manufacturing centres and changing marketplace preferences are encouraging some craftspeople to revisit ideas to do with design, industry and the handmade. I will look at the work of makers who are exploring a number of options for developing creative and sustainable practices in this changing context.
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Les artisans tendent à rejeter les procédeés manufacturiers propres à l'industrie,
ceux-ci étant considérés comme impersonnels. A l'heure des marchés globaux
cependant, certains artisans de l'Australie et de la Nouvelle Zélande acceptent de
revisiter leur approche vis-à-vis leur travail, le design, et la production industrielle.