‘Craft’ is a broad term. It encompasses a myriad of disciplines and numerous techniques. It might be hand-made or machine guided. It might start life as a utilitarian object before becoming a historical artefact. Craft is always evolving. But something all crafts have in common is tactility. Through acts of weaving, sculpting, stitching, layering, piecing […]
In 2015, the novelist Kamila Shamsie issued a provocative call to arms to publishers: let’s make 2018 the Year of Publishing Women. What would happen, Shamsie asked, if publishers refused to publish any books by men during the centenary of women’s suffrage in 2018? In the end, only one publisher took up her challenge: the […]
Though conceptualised for the sculpture park in Graz, the performance piece Cleaning Her by Martina Morger was first executed in Glasgow’s Merchant City in 2018. In the run-up to the performance, the concept for Cleaning Her evolved to relate to the industrial past of Scotland’s largest city more specifically. Historically a point of intersection for international merchants and local […]
There is a craft inclination in art that can put people at unease. It ebbs in popularity. Three years ago at an event at the ICA I was speaking to a sculptor who, when asked if they were still working on the same body of work, replied oh no, they only wrote now. It was one […]
Could you give us a little insight into the ‘Homework’ project – who are you and what do you do? Homework is a research project that I am undertaking with independent curator Clare Sheppeard . Our aim is to twofold, firstly to highlight some of the less visible women artists, designers and architects working in the […]
ONE PORTION LIES REVERSED investigates the folds and creases of letters displayed within the recent ‘Rights for Women Exhibition’ at Senate House Library, University of London. Examples include a letter from Virginia Woolf to Gladys Easdale and a letter from Emmeline Pankhurst to the WSPU’s membership. The bookwork archives the language which falls on the […]
“I had asked myself, in a depressed mood: Is it even possible for a woman artist to be the one who marks?” Laura Owens Is the brushstroke so hopelessly entangled with male subjectivity that the female painter cannot, unless she is willing to adopt at least a partial male subjectivity, make a gesture with a […]
“Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.” John Berger “My work explores how the beauty/fashion and porn industries use imagery to sustain control over women by normalising body objectification and societal expectations of how women should present themselves. I use paint, collage and fabric work, to highlight the damaging effects these industries […]
The way we produce and work with materials is changing. The world of bio design dreams of artificial leather, DNA-based dyes, and zero plastic. It’s a brave new world of design-led thinking mixed with a healthy dose of scientific research. In our last issue, we explored craft’s relationship to the environment. Relating to this the […]
‘Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is other – outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I want is what matter is for. I am that I am, and the rest is women & wilderness, […]
