COLLIDE+DIVIDE Catalouge

COLLIDE + DIVIDE
Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre

Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre is supported by the ACT
Government, the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy – an initiative
of the Australian State and Territory Governments, and the
Australia Council for the Arts – the Australian Government’s arts
funding and advisory body.
Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre acknowledges the
Ngunnawal people as the traditional custodians of the
ACT and surrounding areas. We honour and respect
their ongoing cultural and spiritual connections to this
country and the contribution they make to the life of
this city and this region. We aim to respect cultural heritage,
Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre
Tues–Fri 10am–5pm
Saturdays 12–4pm
Level 1, North Building, 180 London Circuit,
Canberra ACT Australia
+61 2 6262 9333
www.craftact.org.au
Cover image: Photo By Lou Cresp

COLLIDE + DIVIDE
Erin Daniell | Mirjana Dobson | Bailey Donovan | Polly Dymond |
Daria Fox | Sam Gold | Alex Hirst | David Liu | Francesca Sykes |
Eloise White | Duncan Young
Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre
19 May - 2 July 2022

COLLIDE + DIVIDE
Erin Daniell | Mirjana Dobson | Bailey Donovan | Polly
Dymond | Daria Fox | Sam Gold | Alex Hirst | David Liu |
Francesca Sykes | Eloise White | Duncan Young
Collide + Divide is a discipline-bending
object based exhibition that will feature
eleven emerging JamFactory associates who
work in various mediums. Each artist has been
put into a group where they will
collaborate on creating a body of work that celebrates
interdisciplinary skill sharing, merging
both contemporary art and
craftsmanship.
JamFactory is at the center of craft and
design in South Australia and this
exhibition seeks to explore the
opportunities of a cross-discipline
collaboration between the four JamFactory studios
of glass, ceramics, jewelry and
furniture.
The task of each associate is to gain access to
new insights and materialities as they undertake
this cross disciplinary focus. Collide + Divide is
an opportunity to
embrace the unique location of the
JamFactory, one of the few arts centers in the
world to house four separate studios for craft
excellence under one roof.
Image: Eloise White + Daria Fox + Alexandra Hirst. Photo By Lou Cresp

COLLIDE + DIVIDE
EXHIBITION ESSAY
The Power of Hybrid Practice
Essay by Penny Craswell
Specialisation is a tightrope in many fields – stay
too general and you won’t master any skill, but
specialise too much and you might get stuck in
a rut. A new exhibition at Craft ACT by eleven
emerging JamFactory associates groups artists
across disciplines to spark creativity and create
unexpected results through hybrid practice. The
resulting exhibition, called Collide + Divide, shows
the work of five groups of two or three makers
from across JamFactory’s four studios – ceramics,
glass, furniture, and jewellery and metal.
The exhibition also has a conceptual framework,
asking each group to respond to the theme ‘bodies
holding bodies’. Examples of how this might
inspire the work include questions like: how the
maker’s hands and body act as a tool to create
objects, or how these objects can be held by a
body (for example, the hand) or can hold a body
(for example, as a piece of furniture holds a body).
The results are remarkable in their creativity and
originality.
Group One’s Sam Gold and Francesca Sykes
have combined a sculptural approach to
ceramics (Sam) with a furniture-maker’s skill
(Francesca) in a series of three works that
embraces the natural beauty of wood, blacked
using the Japanese shou sugi ban technique,
combined with a white clay half-sphere shape
whose pitted surface reveals light from within.
The work responds to the theme ‘bodies
holding bodies’ by exploring how hands can
shape clay, and also how timber can shape
the body: “Just as the hard wooden surface of
a chair stamps an outline into exposed skin,
so too can skin make impressions in the soft
surface of clay,” says the artists’ statement.
Another aspect of the work that ties together
the two contrasting disciplines is the use of fire
– on one hand to blacken the wood and on the
other to fire the clay.

Group Two’s David Liu and Mirjana Dobson
have combined their respective skills to create
the Orbicella Hall Table. Like Sam and Francesca,
this group has combined timber and
ceramics, with David’s furniture skills meeting
Mirjana’s ceramics expertise. Both David and
Mirjana have practices inspired by nature, with
David’s work communicating a sense of calm
found in the natural world, and Mirjana’s work
inspired by the complex ecology of
underwater reefs. Their combined piece is a
hall table whose minimal timber frame is inlaid
with stoneware pitted with repetitive marks
inspired by the Orbicella, a stony coral made
of rounded domes.
Polly Dymond and Duncan Young from Group
Three have also created a furniture piece –
this time combining Polly’s skills in jewellery
and metal with Duncan’s furniture experience.
The resulting works are the Collide stool and
Divide bench, both of which feature copper-frames
and woven seats. Here, Polly’s
expertise in metal can be seen in the luxe
brushed copper frame, which has an aged
green patina created by oxidisation through
the application of sea water from Willunga
beach, south of Adelaide. Meanwhile,
Duncan’s passion for designing with recycled
materials has resulted in a woven seat made
with reused hospital oxygen tubing. The
combination here is not as simple as adding a
metal piece to a furniture piece – the
makers have built on their expertise and
created something totally new.
Group Four is the only group with three
makers – they are ceramicist Eloise White,
jeweller Daria Fox and glass artist Alexandra
Hirst – and the resulting work is a marriage
of three distinct materials. Soma is a pendant
light with three elements, all in black, that
perfectly balance each other. At the top is
Daria’s contribution, a jeweller who has used
an enamelling technique to create a cupped
disc with subtle surface decorations. Next is
Eloise’s ceramic piece, an egg-shaped smooth
object that is reminiscent of a river stone, and
lastly is a glass shade by Alexandra in rippling
black glass. All together they create a subtle
sense of rhythm as geometric shapes that
evolve along the pendant’s cord.

And Group Five is Erin Daniell and Bailey
Donovan, with expertise in jewellery and glass
respectively. Their combined series of works is
called Common Thread and consists of a
pairing of bronze rings and blown glass
vessels in sea green. Here the theme ‘bodies
holding bodies’ can be seen in the way the ring
sits on the finger and in the touch of the hand
on the vessels. In the artists’ statement, Erin
and Bailey describe the works as nostalgic
keepsakes: “Each colour and pattern
combination is chosen to elevate and embrace
the domestic.” The pieces are paired together
so that the rings become a lid for the vessels,
or they can be used separately as jewellery
pieces. Both artists also stress that the
techniques used – lost wax casting and glass
blowing – are traditional, “evoking a reverence
for the past”, but used to create completely
contemporary designs.
None of us is an island and staying within our
specialist silos can only lead to
stagnation. That’s why projects like this, that
actively encourage individuals to come
together and cross-pollinate ideas, materials
and techniques, are so valuable. When Andy
Warhol teamed up with Jean-Michel Basquiat
in the 1980s, the two artists created 150 joint
works over a two-year period. Basquiat
recalled that Warhol “would put something
very concrete or recognisable, like a newspaper
headline or a product logo and then I
would sort of deface it” (Quoted on Artsy). The
results are legendary, pushing the creativity
of both artists, and the collaboration has now
been dramatised in a new play and an
upcoming film. Similarly, Collide + Divide is an
exhibition that proves the power of opening up
your creative vulnerability to another person.
As for working across craft disciplines, it also
proves that the risk of a hybrid practice can
bear incredible fruits.

David Liu + Mirjana Dobson
Within their artistic practices, both David Liu
and Mirjana Dobson employ forms, textures
and compositions found in Nature as design
elements for their work.
Drawing on a preoccupation with the complex
ecology of our wondrous reefs, Dobson’s detailed
hand-made ceramic tiles fuse an abstract
reference to the recurring rippled surfaces
found on underwater corals. In contrast, the
unpretentious contours of Liu’s work imbues a
sense of calm and order that exists in Nature,
which echoes his belief that the made objects
contain a soul.
Their collaborative timber and ceramic object,
the Orbicella Hall Table juxtaposes Liu’s minimalist
design style with Dobson’s decorative
repetitive mark-making. The inlay of stoneware
within the simple angular contours of the timber
frame binds the natural elements of clay
and wood, highlighting the fundamental relationship
that co-exists between earth and tree
in the natural world.

Bailey Donovan + Erin Daniell
Daniell and Donovan combine their respective
crafts to create a pairing of small sculptural
rings and functional vases. The fragility and
coldness of glass and bronze are softened by
the organic forms and woven details that make
up these nostalgic keepsakes. The paired
forms intentionally fit together to reflect the
unique beauty in its companion. Each colour
and pattern combination is chosen to elevate
and embrace the domestic. The traditional
working of glass blowing and lost wax casting,
re-worked in a contemporary setting, evokes
a reverence for the past and creates personal
meaning regarding physical and spiritual heritage.

Alex Hirst + Daria Fox + Eloise White
Soma is a collaborative manifestation of Fox,
Hirst and White in their respective crafts; metal,
glass and ceramics. Fox is a contemporary
jeweller, incorporating enamel into wearable
and sculptural pieces. Hirst is a glass artist
that spans glass blowing, casting and installations
that encompass utilitarian and sculpture
artworks. White is a ceramicist who focuses on
hand-built sculptural and functional biomorphic
forms.
The three artists have created a dynamic
collection of pendant lighting, uniting their
individual practices in a design that is suspended
between the timeless and the contemporary.
Soma draws parallels between the fluid
forms of each artist’s individual practice and
celebrates the natural beauty of the contrasting
surfaces of the combined materials and
their contrasting. Using the repetition of three
throughout the work, Soma is held together
in a symbiotic balance of shape and form, the
bold tones of black creating a striking silhouette.
Each form of the pendant is purposely
individualised to create a moody and delicate
luminosity.

Polly Dymond + Duncan Young
Combining traditional woodworking and metal
smithing techniques with contemporary applications
Dymond and Young have created
a pair of prototype copper framed stools with
woven seats. A shared focus on materiality
has combined to elevate the classic functional
form, reminiscent of mid century school chairs,
into elegant contemporary furniture by use of
luxe brushed copper and aged green patina,
created with locally sourced sea water from
Willunga beach, south of Adelaide. The contrast
in weaving materials show the intersection,
and departure of the individual maker’s
practices; seagrass reflecting Young’s classic,
natural aesthetic while reused hospital oxygen
tubing speak to Dymond’s preoccupation with
single use waste plastics.

Sam Gold + Fran Sykes
A collaborative new body of work with Fran
Sykes and Sam Gold explores the dichotomous
qualities of clay and wood by seeking
to create a unifying element in the production
processes of furniture making by Sykes and
ceramics by Gold.
In response to the exhibition theme “Bodies
holding bodies”, artists Gold and Sykes looked
at the marks imparted by pressure and movement
of one surface against another. Just as
the hard wooden surface of a chair stamps
an outline into exposed skin, so too can skin
make impressions in the soft surface of clay.
Utilising the softness of clay and the solidity
of wood as two contrasting materials requires
opposing forces to create the same aesthetic:
Build clay out into a shape, cut wood away to
achieve the same effect.
The Japanese shou sugi ban technique is
used to burn, wash and erode wood, mimicking
the passing of time to polish finger markings
deep into wood and allow this material to
impart prints - timber leaving a mark in stone.
The use of fire as a finishing tool for both clay
and wood surfaces - gas kiln “fired” ceramic
and flame “fired” wood - binds the two distinct
practices of furniture making and ceramics
together with a common thread.