The past few months have seen many of us turn to making. Whether it’s perfecting a sourdough loaf, learning to quilt, carving wood, or crafting some loveably lopsided ceramic mugs, the rhythms of the handmade have frequently given solace and lent a sense of purpose during isolation and chaos. “When I’m actually physically making, it really brings me down into that moment,” says Adelaide jeweller Kath Inglis, “and it’s very present and quietens things down.”
It is this human desire to create objects that Obsessed: Compelled to Make explores. What drives artists to devote entire careers to perfecting techniques, pushing mediums, expanding material processes? What is it about the often mundane and repetitive practices of craft that hold people in their grip, professionals and amateurs alike?
Asking this question of 15 established craft and design artists, the exhibition sees Inglis’s striking PVC plastic jewellery sit alongside metalwork by Waradgerie artist Lorraine Connelly-Northey, slipcast porcelain by Honor Freeman and sculptural textiles byLouise Weaver. These works are joined by furniture, silversmithing, glassblowing, weaving and resin-casting by practitioners from all over Australia. The exhibition is anchored around a series of beautifully evocative short films that delve into each maker’s story, getting under the skin of their practice, shown alongside their physical work. “We really wanted to do something which focused on the maker, and focused on why artists do what they do,” curator Lisa Cahill explains.
Originally produced at the Australian Design Centre in 2018, Obsessed is now touring galleries across the country. Importantly, the exhibition opens up to include local makers in each of its touring locations: in Cowra renowned ceramicist Greg Daly features as a guest artist, while other galleries have put on makers’ markets and events tailored to the local community. Generous and poetic, Obsessed underscores, as Cahill says, “the value and power of making by hand.”
Obsessed: Compelled to Make
Ararat Gallery (TAMA)
1 May – 18 July 2021
This article was originally published in the September/October 2020 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
Developed in 2022 by Artback NT as part of Apmere Mparntwe—the Australian Ceramics Triennale— touring exhibition Clay on Country, showing now at New England Regional Art Museum, showcases the diversity of ceramics in the Central Desert.
About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
In Anmatyerr artist Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana’s first solo exhibition in Melbourne—which focuses on the Central Desert food source Arnwekety (bush plum)—the influence and love of her Country and culture is palpable. Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana is now showing at Niagara Galleries.
A new event has arrived in Melbourne’s cultural calendar with the inauguration of the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale: an exhibition that aims to showcase the breadth and diversity of contemporary sculpture in Victoria.
rhythm wRites, a new exhibition at QUT Art Museum, spans 30 years of Bigambul artist Leah King-Smith’s manifold art practice, covering painting, photography, sound and animation.
A Delicate Terrain, a new exhibition of works drawn from the Tweed Regional Gallery collection, looks at our relationship with the environment through the lens of contemporary art.
