‘The Persistance of Craft’ (a book that had influenced my dissertation as well as my pratical work) primarily looks at how crafts are, and have been, tendered toward the use of minimal, geometric and gestural abstraction which essentially is accompanied by overt focus on the function of the object being made. Skills within craft are, and were, associated with the idea of quality. ‘Craft and skill have often been used as interchangeable terms and this has undoubtedly undermined the status of craft as a modernist activity’, (Greenhalgh, P. 1997, p16). The interchange between function and concept reveals the contextualisation of practises in the contemporary art environment today. The on-going continuum of genre history has enabled crafts to continue to engage with the processes of conceptual change at large in the modern world.
This i have and do link to Grayson Perry and Rosemarie Trockel with regards to my own practise. Rosemarie Trockel has been a huge influence with regards to portraying my craft as a conceptual piece of art. One piece in particular that has had a big influence on me is her balaclavas. The balaclava has continued to serve as protection to humanity, allowing for the preservation of anonymity. Trockel’s balaclava’s show a lack of mouth-opening which signals the terrorists and humanities inability to speak in the face of perceived oppression. This i feel i can link to my own work as craft is associated with a homely, functional object of use, where as my craft is trickling further into new dimensions. I feel using this particular work of Trockel’s as a main reference will help me to imagine my own in others way. For example i had not even thought about the identity side of my crochet cubes and they can can represent the identity of beagles. This i feel is a powerful factor to use within my degree project.
Now down to the more craft based skills side of things. I have chosen to remain firmly rooted in Grayson Perry’s work. I feel a passion towards how he thinks and speaks about his work and the word. I also very much like how, like my work, Perry uses his hands to make work as well as some very traditional materials and methods. This i think is key to keeping the structure of the craft clear to yourself as well as the audience.
Many artists have used pots and pans, and ceramics in their work however Perry deliberately exploits the scandalously unfashionable associations that are associated with decoration, domesticity and craft. In relation to this Perry had said this about Duchamp in respect of the handmade pot; ‘But the final irony of it is – and I love this story – is that if you go to an art gallery and you see the father of that explosion – Duchamp’s urinal sitting there – it would have been handmade because the original was destroyed and by the time people became interested in it, you couldn’t get that model of urinal anymore. And so those urinals were handmade by a potter.’ (Perry, G. 2013, Reith Lecture, p.16). Like Duchamp in some ways Perry brings work into galleries that are dangerously seen as art but perhaps should be set and sold within a village or country craft fair or in a homemade house ware store; or in Duchamp’s case the men’s restroom. Ceramics tend to rest within its presumed second class status, and this is why ceramics appeal to Perry.
Grayson Perry’s pots occupy an uncomfortable border territory, in this case between art and craft, so too does Perry’s sexuality as a transvestite. His flamboyant dressing up suggests a similarly dangerous blending of boundaries: between male and female, intellectual and sensuous, serious and comic; presenting an amusing diversion. (Klein, 2009, page9).
In after thought for now, i feel craft is something that needs to remain in society as it holds so many traits that people can contact with. Also it causes debate, debate in my mind about how i use my crafts.
Do i need my work to feel uncomfortable for it to be seen as art and not craft?
Does my work have a border territory?
Should that be in a gallery?
Can you represent something serious using craft?
How do retain integral craft roots while also fixing a concedptual context?
Is there any point in this?
I may discover some answers for these and i further develope my project and my research but for now i just wanted to put down something about a couple artists that i can link with materialistically.
