The Real Deal

Below is an essay I wrote associated with the Craft Revolution exhibition. Please read, respond, debate, question and tell me what you think!

The Real Deal

Recently I heard an interesting take on the Australian film industry. This sector insider outlined that he thought the Australian film industry would never thrive until Australians learnt to love their culture. He said film industries that are successful, such as those in Korea, India and the USA, are so because the people there truly appreciate and are proud of their culture. I thought this was a really interesting point, and quickly saw his meaning - most Australian films explore stories of abject, outsider characters, or take the mickey out of working class Australian lifestyles.

Not unique to Australia but a comparable circumstance is the denial and the degradation of craft. Some within the sector rail, fight and push for recognition, asking at all costs to not be associated with ‘country craft’ or ‘cottage craft’ and won’t accept that this is part and parcel of the craft movement. We, as writers and theorists on craft wax lyrical about the beauty, and deep meaning of a pot or a bowl, as Robert Cook put it, though this seems to demean our case further. Cook (2004) writes, “Craft objects are propositions. Even knowing this, I can never get the balance right. I focus on the material, make a hash of that, and then over-compensate by over-intellectualising, or being overly categorical with the signification”.

We often seem to strive to be in the fine arts, but we’re not, we are in the business of craft. Craft comes in many forms: parochial, traditional, historic, contemporary, and sometimes ‘fine’. I began curating Craft Revolution with very high notions of what craft is - that it is careful, slow, a rejection of a fast paced lifestyle, it is anti-consumerist, it is personal, and connecting. And craft is all of those things, but it is also kitschy, local, and sometimes very ugly; and accepting all of these things would be a revolutionary act.
Craft can be contentious. It can explore notions of race, colonisation and history, all of which are on display in Craft Revolution, and this can be done with great depth and eloquence. Craft can question feminine constructs; the current loud and proud return to craft by young women could be seen as an ‘up yours’ to old notions of femaleness and domesticity (Spencer; 2005). Initially, when women were fighting to be heard we had to get out of the kitchen or the sewing circle, and enter new spaces and claim them. Now, we can exist in new spaces, traditional spaces and in between. Craft offers one way of doing this.

Craft creates community. Who could deny the beauty and kindness of the Queensland Smocking Guild’s ‘Sew Precious Gowns’ project, for which they smock tiny gowns for premature babies who don’t survive their early arrival, but leave this world clothed in a garment so lovingly made by a collective of compassionate, benevolent women. Craft is historic. Stories, yarns, journeys and histories are woven into baskets, or sculpted into and painted onto pots. We can dig a piece of gold jewellery out of the dirt, and this can reveal something of the history and lifestyle of people who lived thousands of years ago.

I won’t say that design is a vague label (Riedelbauch; 2004). You may well think it is, but how does rambling on about the perceived pointlessness of another practice help us at all? And we can start yelling about how craft is as important, and perhaps more historic than art, but where would that get us?

The real deal is with loving craft, all of it, because it is spectacular. Even kitschy cupi doll toilet roll covers are made by someone who skilfully knits a doll sized skirt and then stitches it carefully so it fits the dimensions of a toilet roll. But, yes, I agree, they are not my favourite items and the aesthetic difference between them and a paper thin Mel Robson ceramic bowl with her grandmother’s recipes decaled on the inside could not be more profound.

This marked difference though means that we don’t have to get into a dirty debate over the meaning of the word ‘craft’. Craft is both an object and a practice (Attiwell; 2004), and we cannot prevent people from associating things we don’t like with the term. All we can do is accept it, and keep making beautiful objects with dense meaning and also understand that there is something lovely in women coming together, enjoying a cup of tea and making toilet roll covers. It’s not the same kind of lovely as a beautifully set, classic cut Barbara Heath ring, but ‘craft’ is just a word isn’t it. The real revolution of craft will begin if we can get over all of this, learn to love craft, and accept the many facets of craft culture. Then we can begin to deal with a real issue, like the fact that glass and ceramics schools are closing left, right and centre, and soon there will be nothing left to debate about.



References:

Attiwell, S (2004) Untitled, Craft Australia National Forum 2004 Papers.

Cook, R (2004) Zero to one thousand to nothing, Art Monthly Australia, #172 August, 2004, www.artmonthly.org.au

Reidelbauch, G (2004) What's in a Name?, Craft Australia National Forum, 2004, Papers

Spencer, A (2005) DIY: the rise of low-fi culture, Marion Boyars, London