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NOSE, RICHARD SLEE, CERAMIC, SLEDGE HAMMER HANDLE, CUSHION, DIMENSIONS VARIABLE, 2013 IMAGE COURTESY HALES GALLERY

BRITISH FOLK ART | ETTORE SOTTSASS | JERWOOD MAKERS OPEN | BERNHARD SCHOBINGER

Combiningthe sensualand cerebral

Richard Slee: Work and PlayTullie House Museum & Art Gallery, Carlisle CA314 June – 14 September 2014

Reviewed by Lesley Jackson

Richard Slee is not a great self-publicist but he has a very distinctive voice. A mild-mannered anarchist, throughout his careerhe has stirred up trouble in the otherwisesafe world of ceramics. His work is oftenambiguous, on one level delightfully witty– funny enough to make you laugh out loud– yet his humour can be barbed. There aredark undercurrents beneath the radiantsurface glazes. Slee is a provocateur whochallenges us to re-examine ourrelationship with the material world. Work and Play is Slee’s first exhibition

in Carlisle, his former home town. No fan of installations, he prefers to focus onindividual objects or close-knit groups.Assembled here is a representative sampleof his work over the last decade, forming a coherent ensemble in the roomy galleryat Tullie House Museum. As the titleindicates, there are two main themes. The world of work is represented by toolsand utensils, such as trowels and pickaxes,while play is evoked via toys and games.The largest exhibit, Ping Pong (2010),consists of a full-size table-tennis tablewith balls in suspended animation. Theirscrolling white rococo trails, reminiscentof Umberto Boccioni’s Futurist sculptures,resemble extruded white turds.

What makes Slee’s work compelling is the fusion of the sensuous and thecerebral, the physical and thepsychological. He makes us look afresh at things we take for granted. Everydayobjects, such as tin cans and carpet-beaters, are metamorphosed intosomething quasi-surreal. Some of hiscreations have a sinister quality, as in Spy (2008), where an innocent bird hutbecomes a Big Brother-style listeningdevice. Others are simply bizarre, such as Grill (2010), a vent camouflaged with

appeared since the architect passed away aged 90 in 2007, this claims to bethe first ‘complete’ book on Sottsass, an ambition the above tale suggests italmost – but doesn’t quite – achieve.

Produced in collaboration with theSottsass Archive and Barbara Radice, the critic, writer and Sottsass’s widow,the book opens with four essays from acombination of British and Italian voices.

First, Francesca Picchi gives a usefuloverview of Sottsass’s life and work,showing how his entry into design in the40s and rise to international prominenceby the 80s mirrored Italian design’s owntrajectory. The rest spotlight thepolymath architect’s different spheres of activity: Deyan Sudjic, who conductedthe 1982 Crafts interview, focuses onSottsass’s work as an architect, a careerinherited from his father but which onlytook centre-stage in the years thatbookended his career. Emily King isconvincing on the centrality of graphicdesign in Sottsass’s output, which bothendowed his work with a stronglycommunicative quality and was asignificant area of creativity in its ownright. Lastly, Francesco Zanot sheds lighton Sottsass’s photographic work, imbuedwith the ‘rare quality’ that Sottsass was‘not a photographer’, but a keen amateurwhose curiosity and unreliable memoryled him to capture each everyday andexotic encounter.

The rest of the book continues this combination of biography and disciplinarity. Each of the 11chronologically ordered chapters beginwith several colour-coded text pages:

biography; architecture; ceramics/glass;furniture; graphic design/publications;industrial/production design;interior/exhibition design and jewellery.Textiles, an area Sottsass repeatedlydabbled in, is notably not singled out,although examples do appear in theplentiful pages of drawings, paintings,and photographs from Sottsass’s privateand working life that fill each chapter.

This interweaving of the personal andprofessional is presented as a key way forunderstanding the architect, and it makessense. For example, it was while serving in Montenegro in World War Two thatSottsass sketched its local weavingtradition, expressing an interest in thevernacular that would grow throughouthis career. Three months spent in GeorgeNelson’s New York office in the 50ssparked an interest in integrated modularsystems, while his travels to India and theFar East from the 50s onwards imbued his work with a strongly mystical aura.

Although not explicitly stated, thecentrality of craft throughout Sottsass’scareer is clear – even when his designssuggested otherwise. It is there in Elea9003, the first computer designed andmade in Italy and one of several laudeddesigns from Sottsass’s longstandingcollaboration with Olivetti. Incredibly,every single element of the future-oriented machine, from the circuit boardsupwards, was hand-made. Significantly,Sottsass’s relationship with craft didn’t always go down well: in the 40s,neo-rationalist architect Ernesto Rogersbelieved his interest in colour anddecoration was too frivolous for the social

BOOKS ROUND UP

Hello, I am ErikThe first comprehensive monograph on typographer and graphic designer Erik Spiekermann, showcasing work from his 30-year career. Withcontributions from Michael Beirut,Neville Brody and Wally Olins. Naturally Spiekermann designed atypeface especially for the publication.Edited by Johannes Erler, Published by Gestalten £40 hb

Viktor Wynd’s Cabinet of Wonders‘As a child I had few if any friends, andhave since been mainly alone (even ifoften in a blaze of glorious, drunken anddebased company),’ and so the inimitableWynd welcomes us into his world, to share his collection of curiosities, frombiological specimens to artworks. He alsoshares some of his favourite collectionsbelonging to other people, including aprop house and a nursery of carnivorousplants. Expect the unexpected. By ViktorWynd, Published by Prestel £29.99 hb

WillowWillow’s many roles and stories is AlisonSyme’s subject here. Spanning fromfencing and cricket bats to Monet’spaintings and The Wicker Man, Syme’sbook plots the path of the ‘most poeticand practical of plants’. Contemporarycraftspeople Lise Bech, Joe Hogan andMarkku Kosonen make an appearance. By Alison Syme, Published by Reaktion Books £16 hb

Floral Contemporary: The Renaissance of Flower DesignForget plonking some sad carnations in a vase, this is ‘flower design’. Beautifullyillustrated, Floral Contemporary detailsthe work of 38 floral designers fromaround the world, with Azuma Makoto’ssuspended bonsai trees, Doctor LisaCooper’s portraits of male models withflowered beards and Heiko Bleuel’stableaux reminiscent of Dutch still lives.By Oliver Dupon, Published by Thames & Hudson £45 hb

C. R. W. Nevinson: The Complete PrintsBilled as ‘the first comprehensive survey of C. R. W. Nevinson’s print-making career’, this book charts theartist’s print output between 1916-32.Appreciated now as a artist whosecontemporary images reflected thehorrors of World War One, Nevinson also created prints inspired by Paris and New York in the 1920s.By Jonathan Black, Published by Lund Humpries £150 hb

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SHOVEL PHOTO: ZUL MUKIDA | STADIUM PHOTO: COLIN DAVISON | SOTTSASS IMAGE COURTESY GALERIE BRUNO BISCHOFBERGER

a flamboyantly decorative yellow ceramicframe. Slee’s interventions are soinfectious that I found myself scrutinisingthe gallery’s metal grills and alarms,wondering if they were part of the show.

In Slee’s world, nothing is quite what it seems. Every object, however mundaneor innocuous contains hidden depths,literally so in Broom (2007), where fourcommon or garden sweeping brushescultivate a parallel universe. In AttitudeBroom a disgruntled man sitsdisconsolately with his arms folded in the

centre of the brush, while in Street Broom a group of tiny human figures saunterbeneath a lamp post, hidden amongst theforest of bristles. Woodland imageryresurfaces again in Chopper, where a mini-lumberjack is in full swing felling thebristles with an axe. Next time you sweepthe floor, check whether any of Slee’sbroom dwellers are living in your brush.

Appropriation is the name of the gamein the netherworld of Richard Slee. Such ishis skill as a ceramist that he can simulateobjects originally made in wood, metal,glass and plastic. The mismatch can bestartling, as in Scrubbing Brush (2010)where even the bent bristles arereproduced in ceramic form. Following arecent project at the National Glass Centrein Sunderland, Slee has applied similarprinciples to glass. In Stadium (2013) –alluding to the Stadium of Light, home ofSunderland football club – three torcheshover above a shiny metal platter on solidglass beams. In Blue Broom (2013), thebristles resemble glass stalactites, a twiston his earlier ideas. Seeing such a fragilematerial used in such an ‘inappropriate’way arouses both curiosity and alarm.

Scale is another element that Sleemanipulates to wrong-foot the viewer. InGreat Saw (2012), referring to the GreatWall of China, the teeth on the upturnedblade of an oversize saw suggestcrenellations, while the giant ceramichandle evokes a red-tiled lookout post. Inthe past Slee has largely confined himselfto inanimate objects, so a recent piececalled Nose (2013) marked a new departure.In this entertaining work, recalling NikolaiGogol’s satirical story The Nose, two

Interweavingpersonal withprofessional

Ettore Sottsass By Philippe Thomé, published by Phaidon,£100 hb

Reviewed by Catharine Rossi

Ettore Sottsass Jr had a complicatedrelationship with craft. Interviewed in this magazine in 1982, the Italianarchitect declared that Memphis, theMilan-based postmodern designphenomenon, had ‘nothing to do with the craft revival’ and that it could ‘all beproduced by machines’. Yet his industrialrhetoric belied the production reality – every element of Memphis, from theceramic teapots to the plastic laminateplastered all over its hand-assembledfurniture – was the fruit of Italian’s richartisanal reserve. On this occasion atleast, Sottsass appeared a reluctantpatron of Italy’s craft tradition.

Perhaps surprisingly, this story doesn’t feature in Ettore Sottsass, arecently published monograph fromPhaidon. Edited by art historian PhilippeThomé and designed by Julia Hasting, it is a handsome beast of a book: nearly500 pages and 800 illustrations arecontained within its bi-fold pistachiocover. While several publications have

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enormous disembodied conks take upresidence in the gallery. One nestles high in a corner while the other rests on acushion on the floor. The addition of asledgehammer handle transforms thelatter into an auctioneer’s mallet, a wrycomment perhaps on the freakish natureof the contemporary art market.

As Nose indicates, Slee’s work is open to many different interpretations. If thereis one piece in this show that hints at theelusive character of the artist himself, it is Engineered Snake (2013). Snakes are undeniably beautiful, but there issomething insidious about the way theysilently glide, and there is always thelurking fear that they might suddenlystrike. Slee’s slithering yellow reptile with its girder-like backbone is not onlysubversive but unnatural. A zoologicalmisfit, genetically engineered (so its title implied), it conjures up the serpent in the Garden of Eden, symbolising theambivalence of Slee’s artistic stance. Lesley Jackson is a writer, curator and design historian

Above: Stadium, RichardSlee, blown glass, torches,serving dish, batteries, 2013Left: Shovel, Richard Slee, ceramic, woodenhandle, 1.1 m high, 2010

Left: opening of Menhir, Ziggurat, Stupas, Hydrants & GasPumps (Ettore Sottsass)exhibition, Milan, 1967

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excavated from an abandoned hotelrubbish dump, strung tightly on a red cord.Those glass shards looked sharp, animpression of risk accentuated by a large1988 black-and-white photograph of thepiece being worn by his bare-breasteddaughter. Awkward. This was in-your-facejewellery: risky, aggressive, a bit punk.

This substantial semi-retrospective ofSchobinger’s work provoked similar firstimpressions of consternation, almostbewilderment. Here is another bottlenecknecklace, the sharp-edged green andbrown glass interspersed by steel sawblades. Another necklace is an anything-but-straightforward strung sequence ofused saw blades, while a third is formed ofa series of open small scissors, joinedtogether at the finger loops, with delicatepink tear-drop Akoya pearls suspendedfrom bloodied (lacquer) blade tips. Avariant on this theme has lilac tourmalinedroplets instead of the pearls. Danger anddefiance spring to mind.

But no: I’m wrong. A closer look at thisextensive show of 64 works, focused onrings and with key pieces covering fourdecades, suggests that this isn’t bad-boyjewellery. It’s not enough to see it aspetulant or argumentative. The visceralfeeling I first had is still here, but temperedby many other reactions, includingmoments of humour and irony. See, forexample, a pretty and precious necklacemade of 13 historic gold coins cut in halfand strung pair-wise, showing the obverseside: here are kings, emperors, and such,but at the pendant-point what looks like a Diana or some Greek goddess. This is A Young Lady Surrounded by Old Men. It’switty, making something entirely new outof the familiar. Another piece: a chunkynecklace featuring five radiating oxidisedspikes comes alive through its origins as

Retrospectiveof wit andsincerity

Bernhard Schobinger: Rings of SaturnManchester Art Gallery, M2 5 June – 19 October 2014 Book: ‘Rings of Saturn’, Arnoldsche, £35

Reviewed by Shane Enright

My Schobinger ‘moment’ came the veryfirst time I encountered his work, just 18 months ago, at the wonderful, andinstructive Unexpected Pleasures exhibitionof contemporary jewellery at the DesignMuseum in London.

There was a lot of interesting work:Otto Künzli’s sleek conceptual pieces;Warwick Freeman’s play with indigenousNew Zealand materials and symbols; agrotty ring made from (rusted?) screws byKarl Fritsch; Lisa Walker’s plastic works;and a variety of slick inventive Dutchmakers. But it was Swiss jeweller BernhardSchobinger who stole the show for me,with a long necklace of broken bottlenecks,C

OCKEREL IMAGE: PETERBOROUGH MUSEUM | SCHOBINGER IMAGE COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GALLERY S O

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SOTTSASS IMAGE © ERIK & PETRA HESMERG | GOD BOTTLE PHOTO: MARCUS LEITH & ANDREW DUNKLEY/TATE PHOTOGRAPHY

The Tate’sfestival ofBritish folk

British Folk ArtTate Britain, London SW1 4RG10 June – 31 August 2014 Catalogue: £19.99

Reviewed by Marcus Field

When the Royal Academy of Arts wasestablished in 1769, it included a strictclause in its founding principles that ‘noneedlework, artificial flowers, cut paper,shell work, or any such baubles should be admitted.’ By defining so preciselywhat would not be acceptable as fine art, it set a precedent for our nationalmuseums that lasted for over 200 years.

More recently, however, things havechanged; now the RA is proud to haveTracey Emin with her embroideredblankets as an Academician, GraysonPerry won the Turner Prize with his faux-naïf ceramics, and Anya Gallaccio’sdisplays of rotting flowers draw a crowdwherever she installs them.

This ongoing fascination ofcontemporary artists for the materialsand imagery of folk art provides thethought-provoking backdrop for thisrewarding exhibition. Its three curatorshave trawled the country’s regionalmuseums and gathered together a broadspectrum of hand-made objects – datingfrom the 17th century to the mid-20thcentury – which they describe as sitting‘outside or at the margins of what isgenerally considered to be fine art’. Theiraim, they say, is not to ‘set out a singlenarrative or definition for folk art… butinstead to offer a series of encounterswith different sorts of objects.’

The result of this trawl is a bewitchingdisplay of items, each one full of historyand narrative power. The opening exhibit, for example, is the Bellamy Quilt, a bedcover embroidered by abetrothed young couple over their year-long engagement from 1890-91. Its appliquéd symbols of their sharedinterests – teapots, horses, flowers – are a touching illustration of the potencyof folk art to communicate often complexideas and emotions.

It is this richness of symbolism that makes the works in this show socaptivating, including the many shop and pub signs on display. But there is also something ‘other’ about the giantcobbler’s shoe, the locksmith’s outsize

padlock, and the positively Blakeancarved sun sign. What these thingscontain – and this is especially evident in the wonderful display of ships’figureheads – is a hint of the visionary, atouch of the subversive, a carnivalesqueturning upside down of conventions.

Into this category we can also place the many examples of needlework madeby men. At their most elaborate these take the form of sweetheart pincushions,keepsakes made by soldiers and sailors to send home to their loved ones. Myfavourite is a delicate love-heart from1896 fringed with pom poms and stuckwith beaded pins spelling out the words‘remember me’. More subversively, thereis a Jolly Roger flag stitched by the crew of a World War Two submarine, whichdisplays records of military conquests.

Among the more mysterious folk artforms on display here are the examples of the ‘God-in-a-bottle’. Rather than thebetter-known ship-in-a-bottle, theseglass vessels are filled with intricatelycrafted objects the precise use or meaningof which has been lost, thus adding totheir magical appeal.

Perhaps the biggest crowd-pleaser is amagnificent cockerel carved entirely frombone. Made by a prisoner of war held at theNorman Cross Depot near Peterborough

imperatives of post-war reconstruction.As these anecdotes suggest, the book

reveals new ways of thinking about thewell known architect. There are somecriticisms to be had: I found the emphasison the personal had overshadowed theneed for more critical approaches onproblematic issues, such as theprimitivism in his love affair with the Eastor his objectification of the female form.Similarly, I wanted more on those whomade his career possible: be it FernandaPivano, Eulàlia Grau and Radice, the threewomen Sottsass spent his life with, or the artisans he experimented with ineverything from ceramics to plastic.These criticisms aside, Ettore Sottsass is undeniably a valuable addition to theextensive literature on Italian design, and will be a rich resource for those bothfamiliar with and new to the architect.Catharine Rossi is a senior lecturer in Design History at Kingston University

during the Napoleonic wars, it is astrikingly refined piece. What makes it allthe more remarkable is that no tools wereallowed in the prison, forcing inmates toimprovise by using fragments of brokenglass or other recycled materials forcutting and carving their work.

Of course Tracey Emin and GraysonPerry are not the first artists to have beeninfluenced by folk traditions and imagery.A cluster of paintings by the St Ives rag-and-bone man Alfred Wallis illustratehow Ben Nicholson and other Britishpainters of the 1930s were inspired by the immediacy and primitive expressionof an outsider artist’s vision.

Wallis’s paintings have a long-established place in our art museums, butit’s satisfying to see that the needleworkand other ‘baubles’ once banned by theRA have now made it into their hallowedhalls too. It doesn’t mean that theseobjects have become fine art, but whatthis exhibition does offer is a fascinatingand timely reminder of our rich folktraditions, and the often surprising ways in which they inform our mostcontemporary artists and craftspeople. Marcus Field is a freelance writer and critic. ‘British Folk Art’ tours to Compton Verney, Warwickshire, from 27 September – 14 December 2014

Left: bone cockerel(detail), artist unknown (showing in British Folk Art)Below: Lightning Rod Chain, BernhardSchobinger, necklace,copper (lightning rods), fire gilding, patina, rose quartz, gold,stainless steel, 1990

Right: God-in-a-Bottle, artist unknown, fromBeamish Museum, Durhamshowing in British Folk ArtBelow: glass piece for Ernest Mourmans,Ettore Sottsass, 2006

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An importantspace for risk taking

Jerwood Makers Open 2014Jerwood Space, London SE1 0LN11 July – 31 August (then touring)Brochure: free

Reviewed by Teleri Lloyd-Jones

In her caption introduction to the JerwoodMakers Open exhibition, Shonagh Mansoncharacterises this series of commissions as an encouragement for artistic risk-taking and the production of new,experimental work. Having interviewed all five of this year’s Jerwood Makers, I canconfirm that each artist dealt patientlywith my questioning as their work wascoming together, when they often weren’tentirely sure if it would come off. With this in mind, I arrived full of expectation,ready to see realised pieces that I had so far only half-encountered.

Elemental Symmetries(detail), Shelley James, hot glass, print, steel andbrass, dims variable, 2014

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SCHOBINGER IMAGE COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GALLERY S O | JAMES PHOTO: THISISTOMORROW.INFO

salvaged lightning conductors: This isstorytelling, not statement. At the centre ofthe show is a case displaying a necklace offive large conical conch shells, with crudepink nipples and green marks in children’spowder-paint, strung together onshoelaces: What is all that about? I imagineGaultier’s corset for Madonna. What atfirst seems awkward now appears absurd.

It is this narrative quality, generated bythe contrasts and contexts of his materialsand forms, that sets him aside from hispeers. He repurposes and reimagines whathe uses, notably in the ‘nail rings’ (preciousstones, amethysts and the like, pierced bybent nails) and in the rings made frommeteorites; but the outcome is moreevocative than provocative. This isn’t likeso much self-referential contemporaryjewellery-about-jewellery; nor is his workdrily conceptual; instead it’s expansive,generous, witty and sometimes wry. This is more than ‘salvaged’ art; materialsare appropriated, but so are ideas andemotions, combined in ways that lookaccidental or incidental. There’s a wabi-sabi sensibility; an air of impermanence, of flawed beauty, a naturalism that comesacross as sincerity or authenticity to hissources. All this makes his work, to myeyes, eminently wearable and wonderful to look at up close.

Manchester City Art Gallery hascurated some significant jewellery showsover recent years, but this is surely thehighlight to date; a truly original,substantial and influential maker broughtto public attention via a comprehensivepresentation. The accompanying booksurveys Schobinger’s entire output ofrings, including earlier neo-concretistpieces. This and an earlier volume JewelsNow! give ample evidence of the well-crafted gathering of unexpected orunintended combinations of materials andideas that mark Schobinger’s jewellery outas both questioning and conversational. Shane Enright is a freelance writer on crafts and contemporary culture

Unveilingstories fromthe past

Unravelling UpparkUppark House and Garden, South Harting4 May – 2 November 2014 Catalogue: ‘Unravelling Uppark’ , published by Unravelled Arts Ltd, £8

Reviewed by Kimberley Chandler

I have a slight unease about artistinterventions: they tread a fine linebetween ingenuity and self-interest. How can artists successfully measuretheir own creativity against what SaraRoberts in the catalogue terms the‘accreted histories’ of historic houses?

What makes a successful intervention?Or, is the use of the term ‘intervention’the problem, which indicates (as V&A senior curator Alun Graves hassuggested) an ‘unwelcome interruption’rather than a collaborative endeavour.

This has been the challenge for the 29 artists invited to participate inUnravelling the National Trust, a three-partexhibition that explores the chequeredhistories of three National Trustproperties. Uppark, an 18th centuryGeorgian house on the South Downs, is the last to come under the artists’scrutiny. Its history is weighted down with stories of social mobility and scandal, much of which centresaround the indiscretions of Sir HarryFetherstonhaugh, heir of Uppark, whofirst had a short-lived affair with hisservant girl, Emma Hart, and later, as anelderly man, married his youngdairymaid, bequeathing the entire estateto her on his death in 1846. The house

trades on this exchange between‘upstairs’ and ‘downstairs’, between thesumptuous parlours and the servants’quarters. And it is these improprietiesthat lay the ground for intervention.

In the stables, artist Caitlin Heffernanhas appropriated the solemn fragments of fabric that remained after Uppark wasdevastated by fire in 1989, crafting thesecharred remains into her sculptures. Haybales, leather reins and horsehair areraked into piles that evoke the bodies ofhorses at rest, and a scattering of jewelsoffset this humble mass. Aesthetically,they remind me of Claes Oldenburg’s softsculptures of the 60s, yet Heffernan’sinstallations are more fragmented:existing somewhere between sweepingsand collage, they monumentalise thework of Uppark’s stable hand.

In the dairy, Gen Doy continues thisfocus on labour, but chooses to do sothrough sound. The cool chamberresonates with the alluring song of theyoung dairymaid, Mary Ann Bullock, whoenchanted Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh –much to the disapproval of protocol – aswell as the click-clack of butter-making,and birdsong. The effect is captivating.Doy has positioned the speaker so thatthe sound is not confined to the dairy, butinstead drifts over the lawns, and amongthe flowerbeds; and it is easy to imaginehow Sir Harry fell in love.

Another sonic work has been installedin the Tapestry Bedroom, though it isbarely perceptible. Simon Ryder’s etchedglass compositions sit beneath a windowoverlooking the gardens; each onecaptures the transience of birdsong as a sonic representation. Quartet isdelicate, and draws on the eloquence of paperweights so favoured in the mid-1800s, which Celeste Olalquiaga called‘dream spheres’. Ryder’s interventionexpands on this desire to immobilisenature under a layer of glass, and theillusion of permanence that lingers in the historic house.

While each of the 11 interventions isengaging, there is a sense that visitors toUppark would prefer no intervention atall. As Roberts notes, the challenge for theartists is not to confound visitorexpectations, and this tension is mostevident in the Red Drawing Room. Zoë Hillyard’s fragmented vases are acontemporary take on Japanese kintsugi:she has carefully stitched together thebroken ceramic shards left behind by the house fire, using a quilting techniquethat envelopes each one in a colourfulfabric. Yet Hillyard’s intervention is so subtle as to be overlooked; manyvisitors mistake them for historicalartefacts. Does this work, then, succeed as an intervention? Or is being such

a good imposter detrimental to its effect?For me, it was Steven Follen’s Trade – a

fleet of crudely made tin boats that sweptthe Parlour floor – that truly prised thehistories from Uppark. Positionedbeneath an 18th century black japannedcabinet and numerous Blanc de Chinefigures, the tin boats exhibit a dull shine.Each one is laden with Eastern goods –cotton, cardamom, turmeric, ginger, andtea – with a fragrance that’s unmistakable.These small vessels speak not only ofartisan craft and small batch production,but also of colonialism and uneasy traderelations with the East Indies; anassociation that sits uncomfortablywithin the history of Uppark. Follen’s tin boats evoke the agency of childhood,at once disruptive and rebellious.

This scene may appear just to be child’splay, but it betrays a darker narrative. Trade is proof that the artist, like thehistorian, can skilfully unveil the stories of the past, encouraging us to think anew.Kimberley Chandler is a writer andresearcher in contemporary craft, design,and architecture, and the recipient of the AHRC-funded Design Agency:Activism, Innovation, Transformationstudentship at the University of Brighton

The show begins with an emphaticstatement. FleaFollyArchitects scalemodel of a server farm is black andtowering, with a glint of brass in the manyservers hidden within its large frame. Itseems to scream evil, a pernicious power,yet its filigree details also express adelicacy of form. On the walls beside thetower are three LED and aluminium piecesby Tuur van Balen and Revital Cohen. Youcan make out the limbs of what seem to beletters, but you can’t read it until the LEDsbegin, lighting a path and guiding you intosuch phrases as ‘It Is So Brightness’ and‘We Have To Work Hard And Work WithOur Heart’. These are crisp celebratoryglimpses of a contemporary makinglanguage, in the correspondence betweenthe duo and their LED suppliers in China.Taken in tandem, these two projects,which fill the first room, offer an industrial,sideways look at making.

In the second room the ceramics ofMatthew Raw and Hitomi Hosono form aduet. Raw’s façade, ceramic tiles set onto atimber frame, is a stylised pub: The ShiftingSpirit. Opposite this large piece is a tablewith a family of porcelain vessels byHosono, the perfect embodiment of therisk-taking that Jerwood Makers Open is

Sea Shell Ballet, BernhardSchobinger, neckpiece,four trochus niloticus, one turbo marmoratus,malachite pigment,krapplack pigment,shoelace (c.1950), 2013Below: Remnants, Caitlin Heffernan, 2013

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media while continuing to showcasemore familiar themes from the world of studio craft. Its new direction makesfor a great fit with recently appointeddirector Glenn Adamson, who – asacademic, author and curator – has inrecent years been a strong advocate forthe notion of making as a process withapplication beyond the craft object.NYC Makers is the first show devised

under Adamson’s leadership, and I waskeen to see how it would contribute to themaking debate. Meeting Adamson in hisoffice overlooking Central Park, themessage is clear – this is a show about acity. The selection process it employed,involving more than 300 nominators,maps out a particular territory of making inNYC. In quite a literal sense, it’s a journeythrough the city, seen through a lens ofmaking and materials knowledge.

There are plenty of objects here thatcould be categorised as studio craft, manyof them impressive – I’m drawn to PaulaHayes’s Giant Terrarium, with its sense of nature encapsulated by and for theurbanite. However, the range of work onshow – and the breadth of perspectivesexplored – also extend beyond the worldof the gallery.

We see the making in fabrics woven forthe Metropolitan Opera, and in custom-made trumpets and theremins. We see a video art commentary on the nature ofmaking (from the Plastic Ono Band); andsugar knowingly masquerading as pâte de verre vessel forms (from Papabubble).The work of commercial companies – cratebuilders Boxart and steel fabricatorsMILGO/BUFKIN – sits alongside that of artist collectives and stonemasons.There are tattoos and lacquered nails toshowcase making in fashion, alongside aniconic row of red fibreglass mannequins.And there are also a total of seven themesto ponder and disagree with. Here, there’swit too, intentional or not: Blue Bottlecoffee beans as ‘tools and techniques’ is ajoke with a very New York twist, in this citywhere no one is ever without a coffee.

This is a journey that’s intended to beexperienced as a treasure hunt, and theidea of audiences as explorers – ratherthan passive consumers of art – issomething that Adamson tells me he’skeen to encourage.

Personally, I warm to the concept butalso feel frustrated: the unmarked objectsleave me distracted by the need to deciphera small-print map. What’s more, the smallamount of contextual informationprovided here tantalises, but it’s onlyonline that I uncover the full richness ofthe stories behind the objects, and theirconnections with the city. Catholicliturgical garments, for example, weremade by the Jewish family business Duffy

Revealingstories fromthe Big Apple

NYC Makers – the MAD BiennalMAD Museum, New York1 July – 12 October 2014

Reviewed by Karen Yair

The value of making, as a process thatremains inherently creative while also driving innovation in otherindustries, is an established theme in the international craft discourse. It willnot be unfamiliar to visitors to Power ofMaking, the 2011 exhibition put on by the Crafts Council and V&A, or indeed to fans of this magazine’s regular columnThis is Craft Too.NYC Makers brings this discourse to

the US. It’s a radical position here, but alogical one for the former American CraftMuseum to pioneer. Since its reinventionin 2008 as MAD (the Museum of Arts andDesign) the museum’s exhibitions havecharted new territories, notably exploringscent and digital fabrication as creative

NYC PHOTO: ERIC SCOTT

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Protest andproduction in song

Yan Tan Tethera English Folk Dance and Song Society Cecil Sharp House, London NW1 7AY15 May – 25 September 2014

Reviewed by Liz Hoggard

We’re at the headquarters of the EnglishFolk Dance and Song Society. A cabinet isfull of knitted textile objects. But there’snothing twee or folksy here. One mutantarm with bony fingers is fashioned fromknitting needles; another is adorned withembroidered badges, so it resembles thesevered limb of a Girl Scout. A sinistertextile walking stick hovers in space.

But this is the work of Freddie Robins,subversive queen of stitch, best known forher mutant sci-fi knitwear and replicas ofhouses associated with high-profile crimescommitted by women. In her work, Robinsasks searching questions about gender,body image and power. The pieces in thecabinet were heavily influenced by the old

children’s rhyme, ‘Tell-tale tit’ – theultimate playground insult, whereaccording to the cruel lyric, you have adisabled father who cannot walk, even witha walking stick, and a mother who cannotknit. And yet the energy Robins gives hercreatures makes them oddly defiant.

Curated by David Littler (andsupported by the National Lottery throughthe Arts Council), Yan Tan Tethera, aims to marry contemporary crafts withtraditional folk arts, music and dance (the title refers to a traditional sheepcounting system). So alongside Robins and fellow textile artists, Littler has invited digital artists, multi-mediaperformers, Gaelic singers, fiddle players, and folk choirs to collaborate.

Littler, a sonic visual artist, came upwith the idea for the show after workingwith contemporary and traditional textilemakers from Lithuania, Romania andTurkey. He realised he knew little aboutthe textile songs and oral traditions of hisown country.

So he decided to explore the rich vein of folk music and dances that haveemanated from England’s textiles industry.‘Yan Tan Tethera is a celebration of theonce very close relationship betweenmaking and song,’ he explains.

Works are arranged around Camden’sCecil Sharp House, home of the English

Folk Dance and Song Society. Robins’stwin Cabinets of Textile Curiosities on eitherside of the library mix new commissionswith historical artefacts and researchrelating to songs and dances found in theVaughan Williams Memorial Library(located in the building). A beautifullysinister knitted square has an open mouthcut out of it – inspired by the folk legendthat a maid can see her future husband inher dreams on St Agnes Eve if she fashionsgarters in the correct way. While a pair ofcotton breeches is accompanied by a textabout rebellious spinsters who refused to wear skirts and danced on the tables.There are photos of Clootie wells (placesof pilgrimage in Celtic areas) where stripsof cloth were dipped in the well and thenhung on trees, along with memorabiliafrom Robins’s own life (school certificate,childhood bag and toys).

One of the questions the show asks is:can dance translate into weave? Can stitchbecome step? For performance artistShane Waltener’s ‘stairwell weave-in’, Lace Tell, humans were literally invited to become bobbins.

At an event for Museums at Night,dancers created patterns with ribbons likea cross between a maypole and a gianthand-loom, as singers performed the LaceTell song (originally sung by workersmaking hand bobbin lace) to create anethereal spider’s web of lace that nowwinds over the bannister of the staircase.

Meanwhile, Rachael Matthews andLondon yarn shop and textile collectivePrick Your Finger created a knitted folk mandala featuring charms based on traditional English folk songs –crocheted chickens, flowers, ducks,naughty sheep, as two choirs sang folksongs related to textiles.

It makes you nostalgic for a time whenpeople lived and worked communally,with a close relationship to animals andthe land. But of course industrialisationbrought forced migration andexploitation. Referenced in the show arethe Coventry ribbon weavers, protests of Preston steam-loom strikers andHuddersfield loom breakers.

Downstairs in Cecil Sharp’s bar isStewart Easton’s six foot painted muraland original embroidery work, awonderfully graphic black and whiteretelling of the story of the Tailor and theCrow – where the crow is a portent of warand death; and the tailor is badmouthed as a rogue because he dares to preachagainst the pomp of the church.

Around the walls of the building you’llfind printed broadsides about the textileindustry, iconic LP covers of industrialballads and original audio recordings of folk singers. The acoustics of textile production are key for Littler –

said to engender. After years of creatingintricate white work, the Japaneseceramist is using colour. And what colour!Some of her new works flirts with it – eachapplied motif turning gently from white to peach – while others present solid wavesof pink and green. Hosono has kept herdiligence toward detail, and you can’t helpbut salute her jump into the unknown.There’s a material conversation going on in this room, with intriguing contrasts ofscale, intricacy, perfection and function.

Shelley James’s work has the finalroom all to itself. Clothed in darkness, her five glass pieces sit at eye level, litfrom below throwing the odd refractionon the ceiling. These are beautiful things, inspired by the Platonic solids,matrices of bubbles caught in glass, and they fill the acres of space awardedthem. James continues to draw togetherthe seen and unseen.

As a whole, the show offers a snapshotof contemporary making in the UK, justfive different visions, but transporting usfrom the Arctic to China to the localboozer, to an imaginary tropical island andto Ancient Greece. They might not all hitthe mark, but there’s no doubt that the riskis worth it, and that this is just thebeginning. (For tour dates see Crafts Guide.) Teleri Lloyd-Jones is deputy editor of Crafts magazine

the rhythms of the spinning wheel, the din of the weaving shed, the punching of digital embroidery.

There have been live performancesfrom sonic arts collective sampler-cultureclash (who marry Gaelic song with spinners, weavers and knitters) and traditional and electronic musiciansin an exploration of things that spin.

Indeed one of the pleasures of the show is discovering Cecil Sharp House.The Grade II listed 1930s building has also played host to musicians includingMartin and Eliza Carthy, Mumford & Sons and Laura Marling.

Not that Yan Tan Tethera is confined to the building – graffiti textile song chairshave been placed in cafes, shops andcommunity centres around Camden.People are invited to pick up a needle and embroider their favourite textile song lyrics into the upholstery.

Littler calls Yan Tan Tethera a ‘meeting place where people can begin new conversations’. Sometimes mash-upsbetween different artistic disciplines can feel laboured, even tenuous. But there is something brave and anarchicabout this show as it makes craft a liveperformance in its own right. Robinsconfides she has even started clog dancing classes with Camden Clog.Liz Hoggard is an arts journalist

Lace Tell installation,Shane Waltener, 2014

Below: installation of NYC Makers: The MADBiennial, with Moonmilk,works by Chen Chen and Kai Williams in the foreground, 2014

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IMAGE: © ORIANA ELIÇABE/ENMEDIO.INFO

Design with a socialconscience

Disobedient ObjectsV&A, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL26 July 2014 – 1 February 2015

Reviewed by Grant Gibson

It’s safe to say that there’s plenty going onin the V&A’s latest exhibition. On the faceof it, Disobedient Objects, which has beencurated by the museum’s prints curatorCatherine Flood and Gavin Grindon,currently a visiting research fellow there,is a survey of objects from the late 70sonwards (though there is an early nod to the Suffragettes) created by socialmovements as tools of change. Theserange from a home-made gas maskcreated by protesters during a sit-inagainst the re-development of TaksimGezi Park in Istanbul, where thegovernment used record amounts of teargas, via huge inflatable cobblestones seenduring the General Strike in Barcelona, a slingshot from Palestine and stencil artin Syria. It’s fascinating, important stuff.

At the same time, the show alsoquestions the assumptions of our culturalinstitutions, how we define design andwhy it’s collected. As the curators pointout in their introduction to theaccompanying book: ‘Institutions have an understanding of what constitutesgood design based on criteria of aestheticexcellence rooted in self-perpetuatingprofessional infrastructures and ideas of

connoisseurship.’ Compare this show tothe London Design Museum, for example,which currently houses exhibitions onarchitect Louis Kahn and industrialdesigner Daniel Weil. By contrast to thetop-down approach to the subject ofdesign, the majority of pieces here comefrom the street and are often (though notalways) roughly hewn, created for a veryparticular context. These aren’t objectsdestined to be exhibited at the MilanDesign Week, nor for that matter atCOLLECT. And in doing this, of course, it also questions virtually everything elsein the V&A itself. Again, this is something the curators are alive to, writing that theexhibition ‘enters these conversations,challenging the Museum by confronting it with objects that demand to be treateddifferently. The project has beendescribed to us as institutional critiqueand there is inevitably some truth in this.’

These are interesting times at the V&A.Its new rapid response collecting strategy – which has seen it invest in a pair of jeansfrom Primark, a 3D-printed hand gun, and Katy Perry’s fake eye lashes – hasdivided the cognoscenti; DamienWhitmore, its director of public affairs and programming, has left as part of amanagement re-structure; there are plansto open a new space at the former OlympicPark; and the last time I saw directorMartin Roth speak (at the GREAT Festivalof Creativity) he talked of his desire toopen more of the collection up to thepublic, and very pointedly questioned thelong-term future of the curator. As a resultof all this Disobedient Objects feels verymuch like a prototype for the possiblefuture of the museum.

So that’s the subtext. But is the showitself any good? Actually, yes, I think it is.The opening section splits objects

broadly into four sections – direct action,speaking out, making worlds andsolidarity – while towards the back of theroom are a series of case studies, and abunch of interviews with the likes ofjournalist and economist Paul Mason areprojected on to the far wall. Exhibits aredisplayed with a note from the curator butalso more personal text from the maker oruser, which is a clever, and occasionallypoignant, touch.

It’s a show that manages to be bothdidactic and occasionally nostalgic. For anyone who grew up in the 80s thebanners of the Yorkshire miners and theGreenham Common protesters hangingfrom the ceiling instantly transport youback to the Britain of Margaret Thatcher,when the nation felt as though it was inconstant turmoil. Areas of the countrystill carry the scars. Elsewhere, the mapthat illustrates every protest year by year since 1979 effectively shows howsocial action has become increasinglywidespread, thanks in part to thecrumbling of the world’s political andfinancial certainties and the rise oftechnology that can send ideas aroundthe globe almost instantly. Disobedient Objects isn’t perfect. By

cramming so much in the visitor is oftenpresented with a fragment of the object’snarrative, which can be frustrating andleaves you feeling like you’re dartingaround the globe without being able tofully grasp the implications of all this socialupheaval. (The curators are setting up a website where people can add their own stories and histories to the show’sobjects, seemingly.) However, this is a bold, brave exhibition that could havefascinating implications for the way designis curated and exhibited in the future.Grant Gibson is editor of Crafts magazine

& Quinn, ‘one of the oldest, most colourfulfamily-owned apparel manufacturers inthe US’. Harriet Rosebud’s millinery comesalive when I connect it with the SeventhDay Adventist church congregation thatcrowds my neighbourhood each Sunday.

This is a show that’s best experiencedequipped with iPhone in hand, and withmore time than the two floors it occupiesmight suggest. Spending that time withthe exhibition allows me to get beyond an aesthetic that – as reported by the NewYork Times – seems if not élitist, then atleast very tastefully upper middle class.With scant context provided on site, theshow’s 100 objects feel somewhatflattened by the white walls that surroundthem. Investigated online, the storiesthey embody and that connect them tothe city make NYC Makers come alive. Karen Yair is a research consultant living inNew York

Inflatable cobblestone,action of Eclectic ElectricCollective in co-operationwith Enmedio collectiveduring the General Strike in Barcelona, 2012