Listening to a free thinking podcast that discusses new trends in design with Lisa Mullen and Danielle Tom. There were a couple of key themes that are emerging this year at the Collect show at the saatchi gallery last week. Collect is a show that explore the worlds between modern craft and design. Collaboration between artists working in different media, coming to together to interrogate each others practice was one major theme, this might be makers working at opposite ends of the scale, bookbinders collaborating with ceramicists and so on. Another key theme was an interest for makers to use their practice to engage in broader social issues - climate change, sustainability and resources. Makers are probably in the best position to empathises with natural resources being finite.
The work above is is by UK artist duo Sophie Thomas and Louis Thompson entitled Broken Ocean. The work ruminates on the issue of ocean plastic. The hand blown glass, waste glass fragments, and found ocean plastic references the chaotic beauty of an entangled ghost net being pulled out from the deep ocean,” they say.
The podcast discusses that there is a greater understanding amongst audience about the importance of materials and provenance. There’s also a greater willingness to disrupt the traditional hierarchy of materials, such as working with recycled plastics, a material that has not been held in high esteem and it’s the process of making and crafting that elevates the material.
Makers hand ----------->what do they bring to the material ---------> end result.
Is functionality an attribute that makes an object more approachable? When something is design for use and handling. Does something that is designed to be decorative need to be precious and put on a pedestal. These are all questions that I am questioning in my practice. There’s a desire to make something that sits in-between but at least some way of seeing the makers hand.
