The border

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Megan Munro, Lia Tajcnar, Elizabeth Kelly, Steven Harkin, Tim Foster, Brigitte Enders, Gilbert Riedelbauch

Craft ACT Gallery 2: 3 April - 18 May 2008

Text by Jas Hugonnet , April 2008

The border is a project that aims to highlight our connection with base forms and the way artists attach ideas to these forms expressing emotional and material qualities. By the term base forms I mean generic forms such as a bowl, platter, decanter, vase, basket, bag etc. This exhibition is about exploring a new context for objects by bringing together specific works that allude to function.

The objects in the border are drawn from a limited field, in this case works previously shown at Craft ACT. As opposed to asking artists to work towards a brief, I was drawn to these existing objects for the fact that they could be utilised as a base form or not at all. That said some of the objects in the exhibition allude to a base form yet it was not the intention of the artists to aim for function. What became apparent looking at these works was that they could be considered base forms that served a purpose in that they all had the possibility of holding something be it food, other objects or liquid. An obvious decision in the creation of these forms seemed to be the way artists were setting up the possibility for interaction.

Why do artists choose base forms as a starting point? Is it simply a morphing of their production line work to achieve an abstract expression? Or are base forms a natural destination when one embarks on the path of making? Ceramics and glass are mediums where artists gather and reposition the material to create enclosure, while other forms in the border are tectonic, where specific parts are arranged to create structure. Looking at the seven objects in this exhibition one can focus on the thought processes behind designing and making and draw their own conclusions on these processes.

Megan Munro

• Tubular Plastic
• 2004
• crocheted recycled
• plastic bags
• 380 x 380 x 280mm

When making Tubular Plastic, Munro deliberately started with the idea of making a basket form, seeing the potential of a vessel as a structure and as something that could be made to look entirely taken over. Through this highly crafted work, Munro draws our attention to the throw away associations with plastic bags and their subsequent destructive capabilities. She invests the time and skill to create a functional basket and in doing so highlights plastic as a material of potential as opposed to land fill. Munro's work equates itself with the fact that nature tries to consume and reclaim manmade items, yet the irony and message delivered by this base form is that plastic bags continually disrupt natural environments as they successfully resist being broken down and absorbed.

Lia Tajcnar

• Ode to a Nudibranch vessel
• 2005
• porcelain
• 155 x 80 x 80mm

Tajcnar has been interested in vase forms throughout her practice for their sculptural and functional capabilities. Her interest lies in how far a sculptural direction can be pushed before it starts to negate the useability of the object and what the implications are for this in-between space. While her work relates to the ceramic tradition of domestic scale it also carries her philosophical ideas, once placed within someone's home. For Tajcnar, there is something grounding in the notion of function, as opposed to an actual function, which enables the viewer an accessible entry point into the work. Part of the reason that Tajcnar includes functional vessels within her work is to investigate the relationship between an object and an entity. The vessel, because it has clear historical and cultural implications, can stand in for what is known to be an object while her applied ideas morph the vessel towards being a 'thing' (an entity), allowing for her work to slip into an area where dual readings are possible.

Elizabeth Kelly

• Square Form
• 2004
• cast and hot-formed glass
• 60 x 280 x 300mm

In Square Form the essence of a base form (platter) is suggested but Kelly's primary concerns are to do with material and process rather than function. Kelly's square forms are in the loosest sense functional objects. Originally made as a set, the square form in the border was the result of repeating a rapid sequence of movements resulting in the production of a fluid form. The properties of glass enabled Kelly to retain a feeling of the working process, expressed by the flow and movement in the finished piece. The work suggests a sculptural approach while balancing material mass to exploit glass's ability to transmit light. For Kelly, sensuality in form stems from the juxtaposition of opposites; soft rounded edges using a rigid and brittle material.

Steven Harkin

• Security Aware
• 2005
• leather, chain
• 160 x 360 x 80 mm

Harkin designed Security Aware as a reaction to life in London and people's obsessions with personal security. The work comments on the design industry where accessories are specifically designed to foil crime. Spurred on by government sponsored programmes such as Design against Crime, this is Harkin's tongue in cheek reaction to this trend and the overall aesthetic of these products on the market. Presented as a sculptural object on a plinth in a white space the work almost appears as a trophy wrapped in chains and padlocks. As opposed to other production work that Harkin has produced, Security Aware limits the bags function becoming a kind of anti bag to carry Harkin's commentary on the way that we treat each other.

Tim Foster

• Staved Decanter #7
• 2004
• celery-top pine
• 480 x 115 x 115mm

Foster's base form is a vessel in that it has an obvious interior and exterior and one where all aspects of the construction add to the total reading of the piece. His intention was to move beyond the conventions of traditional coopering (the making of wooden barrels) and to explore the possibilities of asymmetry to express a more sculptural form. Staved Decanter #7 is in essence an exterior surface of graduating curves, that are emphasised by the joining lines between the individual elements which make up the whole piece. Conceptually the relationship between the whole and the individual parts is inextricable, a philosophy that Foster equates with nature and society.

Brigitte Enders

• Hammerhead
• 2004
• stoneware
• 270 x 290 x 95mm

Enders work is always sculptural. As a passionate ceramicist of some forty years practice, she remains faithful to the premise of the crafted tradition, and perhaps because of this, her pieces invariably reference the vessel - partly as a mark of respect to traditions of making, but more particularly because her practice is driven by preference for the hollow form. She is intrigued by the concept of an imagined interior-space. While the aperture in Hammerhead functions as an element in the design and firing process, it mainly provides access to the interior for our contemplation.

Enders rarely makes functional-ware as such, unless the function usefully serves her concept. The Hammerhead form isn't functional in a general utilitarian sense. It serves instead as 'functional abstraction'. That is, it is a representation of the act of hammering itself.

Gilbert Riedelbauch

• PD Bowl 2.6
• 2004
• ABS, yellow and gold leaf
• 177 x 160 x 72mm

Riedelbauch's practice utilises new technologies and investigates how as a craft practitioner one can retain the same control when working from idea to object. Through the use of computer aided design and rapid prototyping, the coordinates of his objects are calculated as wireframes in a virtual 3D space. The PD Bowl 2.6 is based on a mathematical formula that describes the surface and determines its form. The surface is then shifted from its 2D state to become a 3D object with a material thickness. This virtual object is then produced out of a rapid prototyper. The object is plotted horizontally into digital cross sections where layer upon layer is fused on top of one another until a whole object has been literally built from the original drawing.

Riedelbauch's work is process driven incorporating calculated decisions. The base form of the bowl becomes a vehicle demonstrating the capabilities of technology in the important shift from sketching to modelling. The particular qualities of the final object will in turn influence the design of future objects based on these same processes and in doing so Riedelbauch continues to explore how the constraints and idiosyncrasies of technology can be cultivated creatively.

The border suggests that while function enables the viewer an accessible entry point into work, it operates by degrees where the primary concerns of makers seem at times to be more about concept, process and material rather than function. The exhibition proposes that base forms can be seen as structures to accommodate applied ideas, sculpture and function. While evidence of a base form can be seen in many artworks, it is the functional abstraction by the artists that invites contemplation. The works in the border show that as objects embody the transition to three dimensions they chart artists' views via materials, which through applied hand skills have been crafted.

 

Jas Hugonnet
Curator / Exhibition Manager
April 2008

Image credits: (top to bottom)

• (Banner) Jason Hugonnet;
• ANU Photography Stuart Hay;
• Jason Hugonnet;
• Steven Harkin;
• Tim Foster;
• Klaus Moje;
• Gilbert Riedelbauch.