Deviants

Deviants is a Crafts Council exhibition that I had been trying to track down for a while. I eventually got to see it at Worcester Art Gallery. It is a small exhibition and all the objects deviate from what is normally expected from craft objects, so most were not functional. The functional becomes dysfunctional. Some of my personal favourites were Freddie Robbins’ Hand of Good gloves with a miniature glove in the place of each finger of the glove; Richard Slee’s Hello? ceramics; and Henry Pim’s Pot with Ears. The exhibition was accompanied by a handout with comments from The Lonely Piper which I found greatly enhanced my experience.

Desconocida

Desconocida is an exhibition by Lise Bjorne Linnert at The Gallery, UCA Epsom, that responds to the murder and disappearance of many hundreds of women in Juarez a town on the border between the USA and Mexico. The seminar participants were asked to embroider the name of one of the women who has disappeared on a name tape which is then displayed with the other names on a wall in the gallery. Embroidering the names gave a sense of ownership of the problem and made you feel an association with the woman whose name you were embroidering. The exhibition also included rayographs of Lise’s breath as she talks about the problems in Juarez.

Kantlijnen

This lace festival was held throughout Brugge. The illustration is of the Ghentport at night. Some of my favourite exhibits were Pablo Reinoso’s Chairs and the Miss Blackbirdy fashions in the Gruuthuse Museum. I was interested to see the wire lace fence round the windmill and to find that it is not made in one piece but the pattern is inserted in to the mesh background. I was fascinated with the paper lace by Carlo Mistiaen in the Gezelle museum and would have liked to have spent more time drawing it. I was also interested in the display of Saint’s cards at the Folk Museum many of which included pin pricked patterns similar to bobbin lace patterns. At the Memling Museum I thought that the Serena installation was beautiful and mesmerizing in the way that the patterns kept changing with the different light sources. The Memling’s were also beautiful especially the reliquary depicting Saint Ursula.

Curiouser and curiouser

This conference organised by UCA was held at the British Library and involved a series of workshops on innovative teaching methods. I attended three of them, the first was a workshop by Sue Shearer who had been working with a group of blind students at Epsom. We were blindfolded before we entered the room and remained blindfolded throughout the workshop which allowed us to experience some of the problems blind students face. Samples of different fabrics were then handed round for us to feel and we also had to manipulate a piece of paper. It was a thought-provoking experience. I then went to Rebecca Skeels workshop where she described a peer-learning support system she had instituted in the jewellery department at Farnham. The final workshop I attended was Sarah Sutherland’s talk on her experience with non-traditional learners on the MA course at Farnham. As part of this workshop, six of the MA students (including me) had to give short accounts of different technology we use as part of our course. I talked about setting up a blog and how useful it is.

Tate Modern

A trip to Tate Modern was organised for the MA group from Farnham. We all went to the Rothko exhibition, had lunch together, then looked at some of the other galleries. I ha already seen the Rothko exhibition, but it was interesting to see it again and in different company. Looking round the other galleries I was interested in the installation by Victor Grippo ‘Tables of work and reflection’ and the untitled piece by Jannis Kounellis in the Surrealist gallery that includes crows pierced by arrows. I was also very interested in the work of Susan Hiller who trained as an archaeologist and anthropologist and works with collections and produced the installation ‘From the Freud Museum’. This has inspired me to find out more about these three artists.

Designer Crafts at the Mall

This exhibition by the Society of Designer Craftsmen included textiles, jewellery, ceramics, glass, furniture and wood; there seemed to be more textiles than the other categories. The display was good but some of the work seemed little more than samples. My favourite pieces were the witty designs by Caren Garfen, particularly her domestic mugs with sewn messages and teabags containing domestic utensils. Other favourites were Miranda Meilleur’s delicate, lace-like silverware and Alison Levy’s sliced and pierced jewellery. It was useful to be given a catalogue as part of the entrance fee and I thought the sales area where objects could be tried on and purchased was a good idea.

Babylon at the British Museum

This exhibition at the British Museum had the subtitle ‘myth and reality’ and that was the focus of the exhibition. Different areas concentrated on the Hanging Gardens, the Tower of Babel, Nebuchadnezzar, the rivers of Babylon, Daniel and the kings, and Belshazzar’s feast. Many of these subjects were familiar in a vague way but it was interesting to be given more details and place them in a historical context. For example, there was information about the importance of interpreting dreams and Daniel’s role in doing so and about the conquest of Jerusalem and the deportation of the Jews to Babylon. Much of the exhibition was taken up with depictions of these Biblical references from ancient times to the modern day but there were also many artefacts from Babylon including several interesting cylinders of cuneiform script.