Gary Breeze – Lettering sculptor, Neil Brownsword – Ceramics artist, Sonya Clark – Textile artist, Rebecca Earley – Textile designer and expert in environmental textiles, David Gates – Furniture designer, Matthew Harris – Textile artist, Amy Houghton – Animation artist, Sue Lawty – Textile artist, Elizabeth Turrell – Enamel artist, Judith van den Boom & Gunter Wehmeyer – Slow designers, Heidrun Schimmel -Textile artist, Paul Scott & Ann Linnemann – Ceramics artists, Shane Waltener & Cheryl McChesney Jones – Artist and Choreographer, Esther Knobel – Jeweller, Ken Eastman & Dawn Youll Ceramics artists
Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution is a touring exhibition from Craftspace curated with Helen Carnac. It features the work of nineteen international makers and artists reflecting on the “Slow Revolution”. The exhibition features textiles, jewellery, upcycling fashion, enamelling, furniture and ceramics.
Textile designer Rebecca Earley gave up a successful career in the fashion industry to work on her upcycling project. Mindful of the impact clothing and textile production has on the environment she turned to “upcycling” – increasing value by reuse. In her “Top 100” collection she takes discarded shirts from charity shops and through over-printing, re-cutting and re-styling she transforms unwanted items into one-off designer pieces. A second life is thus given to a polyester shirt that would otherwise take more than 200 years to decompose in landfill.
Shane Waltener is an artist whose work has been exhibited internationally. Crossing boundaries between fashion, craft, sculpture and fine art, his work has ranged from graffiti in icing sugar to knitted sculptures. For Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution he has created a ‘Garland’ installation. Made from colourful yarn, string and paper Waltener has used needlecraft and knotting techniques to make a vast woven installation which visitors are invited to add to with their crochet or knitting.
The slowness of the process of making and ideas of time are emphasised in the work of Sue Lawty (artist in residence at the V&A) who creates vast abstract drawings composed from thousands of small stones. Her measured intricate stone drawings suggest the vast geological time that transforms a rock into a minute sliver.
For this exhibition ceramic artist Paul Scott has worked in collaboration with Danish ceramicist Ann Linnemann. Ann has hand thrown a series of delicate porcelain cups and trays which Paul has printed with summer and winter trees, garden paths, borders, flower and vegetable beds, inspired by maps from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery collection. The importance of community and collaboration as an alternative to the fast-paced individualistic culture of today is also stressed within the Slow Movement, but this does not necessarily mean a rejection of technology. Amy Houghton will initiate a “Tweave” throughout the exhibition tour – an evolving woven digital artwork using social networking site Twitter.
