The Value of Making

I'm so thrilled to announce that The Value of Making (my Makers and Doers project) has been selected by the Crafts Council to show at COLLECT - The International Art Fair for Contemporary Objects. My project is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

I will be showing seven portraits of makers through the tools they use celebrating the makers and doers. The people who know how to build things; who have fantastic making skills; are creative problem solvers; those with extremely fine motor skills and wonderful hand eye coordination. As a society we are losing so much by not recognising we need a population with a broad variety of skills and talents. I’m really concerned about the position of making in the hierarchy of skills we value as a society and how this is exacerbated by the decline of making in schools.

The starting point for this work began whilst working on a collaborative project with Bridget Bailey in 2016, exploring the idea of portraits and looking at depicting the person through their workspace and tools.

So far I visited the workshop of Sebastian Cox a furniture maker based in SE London, we had a really interesting conversation about power tools and computer controlled machines, Sebastian is very keen that his practice shouldn't be romanticised.
Maiko Dawson at The Elephant Hotel, I have long admired Maiko's beautiful shoes we chatted about Japanese scissor makers, the sound of a good scissor action and the decline of British shoe-last manufacturers. I visited Ane Christensen in her Hackney studio. We discussed tools and skills and kids and bricklaying and patience and perseverance. We talked about people who have making skills and what a vast and diverse group we are. Ane is a metalworker, her go to tool is a deep framed piercing saw, I was thrilled to observe the saws worn handle and the masking tape on the tightening screw, these details put you in the hands of the maker using the tool, loosening and tightening that screw over and over, the repetition is evident.

Collect Open 2018 22-25 February 2018
Saatchi Gallery
Duke of York's HQ
King's Road
London SW3
Early Bird Tickets

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