Home is where the craft is
A long time crafty buddy of mine, Cate Lawrence who readers will know from Polka Dot Rabbit and Green Renters, curated a wonderful show during the latest Melbourne Fringe Festival called “Home is where the craft is”. The show and accompanying market, featuring some wonderful local craft talent, was literally held in Cate’s home. Cate used the show to ask some quite interesting questions about the definitions and value of craft vs art. In particular the difference in value between something that’s produced for the home vs something that’s produced for a gallery.
And the work in the show was stunning.
So much work was there and wouldn’t want to think how many collective hours went into producing it all. Sadly I missed the opening due to one of the kids choosing that day to explode. But sounds like the opening was a great success and the other days were well attended.
Nice work Cate, can’t wait til the next show!
SITE
As previously blogged, Radical Cross Stitch got together with Public Assembly to produce an installation at the Sculpture Now?!? Exhibition with the aim of gathering together a community of people to stitch the term SITE for the Embroidered Digital Commons project facilitated by Ele Carpenter.
And we did!
And it was fun!
The opening night was a total riot with a whole pile of people leaping in to participate. Wine was drunk, cake was scoffed and plenty of stitching was completed.
I was so rapt at how many people got into it. There was an expected hesitancy to begin with. People aren’t used to art that you sit on, eat, drink and play with. And I’m happy to say there was at least one person who didn’t get it at all. A lovely old bloke took it upon himself to be our heckler with exclamations of “what? what is this? knitting?!?”, “where’s Germaine Greer?!?”. And as he got drunker through out the evening, the heckling got louder and more verbose.
I could have kissed him.
We didn’t really expect to get a lot done on opening night but surprisingly quite a lot was done. I was impressed with the number of people who wouldn’t move until their patch was completed. But we followed up the opening with two day time sessions in the gallery which were a lot more relaxed and focussed on the stitching and discussion (and kids!).
There’s plenty more photos of all the sessions here.
I really enjoyed the day time sessions especially in regards to the discussions that took place. A big part of the project was to facilitate dialogue but in a very loose way. We had assigned a discussion theme to each session but weren’t fussed if those themes were touched on. The main objective was to create a space for creative people to get together and just hang out and TALK. We live in such a time poor society that it’s a rare thing to just sit and relax, let alone intentionally go somewhere else and do it with other people. And the conversations did go to some very interesting places!
A massive thanks to the curators Anna and Kelly and to all the people who came and hung out and stitched. Too deadly.
We didn’t quite complete the embroidery over the space of the show but I’m working on finishing the half finished ones and we’re planning another get together some sunny day soon. In the mean time, friends are more than encouraged to drop in and pick up a needle!
I was also pretty interested in the gallery surrounds. Some nice street art around the place. But sadly this awful vacant fenced off bunch of buildings next door. Clearly council property. Thanks government..
So I said hi.
All we are saying…
And the award for the most fun sounding craftivist project of the year award goes to…
To celebrate the 70th birthday of John Lennon, the Craftivist Collective, a bunch of rad types over in England have organised a brilliant creative venture to get you thinking and talking about what global peace and justice means and would actually look like. Participants have been invited to create an embroidered quilt piece which will become part of a giant peace protest duvet. Radical and cosy, doesn’t get much better.
World peace sometimes sounds a bit cliché. In these days of greater global awareness and communication about the worlds ills, sometimes I reckon we make things just a bit too complicated and get a bit niche in our focus on issues. I know it certainly helps me in my activism to stop and take a breather every now and then and remember the big picture. Certainly thinking about vision and imagining how we want the world to be, rather than just focussing on what’s wrong with it is a very useful process to help avoid the ol’ activist burnout.
You can check out all the details here and sign up here to get involved.
Sadly, I’m going to have to give this one a miss. One of my best ways to keep me focussed and motivated on making the world a better place is hanging out with my kids. The last few months have been pretty madcap and I’m quickly realising my babies aren’t going to be babies much longer. So I’m downing tools project-wise for a couple of months to hang out in the sun in the garden.
But you have no excuse, get stitching.
peace