Collision course of craft and art
You can call it craft. I call it art. That’s because the border between craft and art has unravelled.
Nevertheless, the first-ever Canadian Craft Biennial at the Art Gallery of Burlington puts craft in the spotlight, showcasing work by leading craftspeople from all over Canada.
The Canadian Craft Biennial, founded by Emma Quin and the AGB’s Denis Longchamps, aims to increase our understanding and appreciation of craft in Canada.
Longchamps says craft plays an important role in our everyday lives.
“Craft is all around us in various forms,” he says. “Often i n our house, it is also on TV, in magazines. Many have a f avourite handcrafted mug or hand knitted sweater.”
Craft and art have traditionally been stuffed into separate categories. Simply put, craft was seen as functional, art was not. That made art superior to craft.
Certain materials and techniques such as yarn and knitting, for example, were the domain of craftspeople. But in the 20th century, art appropriated materials and techniques once exclusive to craft.
Both craftspeople and artists now use recycled materials. Moreover, many craftspeople create objects that for the most part are nonfunctional. And they imbue their creations with timely messages and meanings.
The biennial comprises four exhibitions. Can Craft? Craft Can! is one of them, bringing together more than 60 makers. It fills the main gallery.
This exhibition’s title, Longchamps tells me, “is a play on words. Can as in Canadian and Can as the verb, ‘Yes we can!’ So the exhibition is showing a small portion of who and what is Canadian Craft in its multiplicity of manifestations including video, installation, traditional, community oriented, contemporary and sculptural.” Here are some highlights. Eva Siakuluk, who lives in Nu-
navut, creates wall hangings and traditional clothing. In “Untitled” she embroiders people and landscape onto a felted background, dividing her composition into four distinctive horizontals that move from the ground up to clouds and sky.
Janet MacPherson, a Torontobased ceramist, builds images of fantastical hybrids from porcelain enlivened with bits of gold.
“Hybrid Land,” a free-standing sculpture, consists of an animal with a sheep’s body and a deer’s head and legs. Its head and forelegs are bound in bandages. Tiny creatures including mice, goats and wolves cling to it. Some are bandaged and others have two heads — signs of destructive human interference in nature.
In “Ashes to Ashes,” Angelika Werth sews up an outfit from recycled clothes, creating a life-size sculpture that she tops with a catcher’s mitt. Piles of fabric lie at the base, a reminder of where clothes come from.
Werth’s outfit is not radically different from some of the clothes seen on fashion show catwalks. After all, Werth once worked for Yves Saint Laurent in Paris.
For “Résilients,” Carole Baillargeon covers old tools such as pliers and punches with wool, combining the hardness of metal with the softness of wool.
Wool was traditionally associated with woman’s work, tools with men’s, so each piece represents a fusion of traditional gender-based roles.
But the wool renders the tools useless. It also recalls a kind of cocoon. Can these old tools metamorphose into new technology?
Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art. dhaggo@thespec.com