Between Art and Industry

Exhibition

Between Art and Industry25 May 2012 – 4 July 2012

Between Art and Industry offers an opportunity to explore the shifting relationships between craft and industry through the use of evocative imagery utilising text, film and sound. 

With the advent of globalisation, methods of manufacturing have shifted dramatically. Outsourcing of labour to other countries has resulted in decline of industrial manufacturing in Ireland and the UK. This exhibition reflects on those trends, on their consequences and costs, and on the potential for sustainable, highly skilled small-scale production to offer a new model.

Between Art and Industry has been curated by Ann Mulrooney of the National Craft Gallery, who says of the exhibition: 
“The title of this exhibition expresses the relationship of craft to industry. Craft is an intelligence of the hand that creates the bridge between initial inspiration and finished product. It is a specific, skillful, engaged and physical understanding of materials and process, problem-solving by its nature. Shifting values suggest that the evolution of manufacturing now is towards a closer relationship with craft and the handmade. In that sense, this exhibition could be seen as an arc, responding to the legacies of history but also describing a present in which new manifestations of small-scale production can be seen to emerge and survive”

The exhibition is a co-production with the Millennium Court Arts Centre in Portadown, where it will show from 4 August - 29 September 2012.

Artists:

Neil Brownsword (UK) is from Stoke-on-Trent, a world centre for ceramic production. He started his career as an apprentice at the Josiah Wedgwood Factory in 1987 before going on to study ceramics in Cardiff and the Royal College of Art, culminating in a practice-based PhD from Brunel University in 2006. Assuming the role of artist/archaeologist, he unearths and salvages by-products from factories, to create an artistic narrative around the steady closure of factories and the disappearance of indigenous skills. Read more about his work here:

Róisín de Buitléar (Ireland) has a long association with Waterford Crystal, since her student days at NCAD. As a glass artist, she organised many collaborations with the factory, forming personal relationships with some of the 4000 workers, blowers, cutters, engravers and sculptors employed there.  In 2009, with the help of the Crafts Council of Ireland Irish Craft Bursary, de Buitléar began investigating the history of Irish glass, and recorded oral histories of the factory workers. During this period, Waterford Crystal went into receivership and the contents of the KIlbarry plant were sold, a process Buitléar documented photographically during the open viewing. Visit her website here:

In a collaborative process that is also an important part of the work, all of the pieces for this exhibition have been made by hand in Waterford at Irish Handmade Glass, a small workshop established after the closure of the Kilbarry plant by four master glassmakers who originally trained in Waterford Crystal. This work is about the celebration of skill that still exists in the country, and not a lament for its loss.

Molloy & Sons (Ireland), is a two man woollen mill, based in Ardara, Co. Donegal. They are one of the few companies who can proudly claim to create authentic Donegal Tweed. Shaun and Kieran come from generations of weavers. Shaun’s father, John, founded a woollen mill in the mid-20th century, but over the years that mill has gone from making tweed to making knits almost exclusively.


A couple of years ago, Kieran brought an industrial design degree back home, and he and his father decided to take the tweed-making equipment out of mothballs and start up a tiny artisanal weaving company that is quietly building an international reputation. Visit their website here:

On Tour

Education & Outreach