2022 Craft ACT's Annual Report

DESIGN Canberra 2022, Kayannie Denigan & Estelle Briedis. Photography 5foot
• Dianne Ungukalpi Golding
(Ngaanyatjarra) a Tjanpi Desert
weaver featured in Tension[s].
• Judith Yinyika Chambers
(Ngaanyatjarra) a Tjanpi Desert
weaver featured in Tension[s].
• Joyce James a Tjanpi Desert
weaver featured in Tension[s].
• Charlotte Golding
(Ngaanyatjarra) a Tjanpi Desert
weaver featured in Tension[s].
• Amy Hammond (Gomeroi)
a Yinarr Maramali Gomeroi
Community weaver featured in
Tension[s].
• Lorrelle Munro (Gomeroi) a
Yinarr Maramali Gomeroi
Community weaver featured in
Tension[s].
• Bronwyn Spearim (Gomeroi)
a Yinarr Maramali Gomeroi
Community weaver featured in
Tension[s].
• Sophie Honess (Gomeroi)
a Yinarr Maramali Gomeroi
Community weaver featured in
Tension[s].
• Emily Honess (Gomeroi) a Yinarr
Maramali Gomeroi Community
weaver featured in Tension[s].
• Lena Smith (Gomeroi) a Yinarr
Maramali Gomeroi Community
weaver featured in Tension[s].
• Gabbi Briggs (Gomeroi) a Yinarr
Maramali Gomeroi Community
weaver featured in Tension[s].
• Mona Fernando (Gomeroi)
a Yinarr Maramali Gomeroi
Community weaver featured in
Tension[s].
• Paula Savage (Kaurareg) a MOA
Arts weaver featured in Koskela
x MOA Arts.
Research
Craft ACT is an advocate for
practice-led research, where
innovation and excellence in
craft skills intersect. In 2022,
we have continued our support
of practitioners to explore,
experiment, and produce a variety
of craft and design work with a
number of exhibitions within this
year’s artistic program showcasing
the results of research. These
exhibitions included:
Jeremy Brown’s exhibition Home
Grown, featured the practice-led
research of making from local
trees, investigating the beauty
of both the internal and external
structures. The connection
between the two is often lost
when a tree is stripped down to a
functional material. Furthermore,
Brown explored his relationship
with the trees of Canberra while
simultaneously giving the audience
a chance to reflect and submit
their own tree story. Brown intends
to use the submitted stories to
research other relationships to the
trees and how that can translate
into furniture works.
Rebecca Selleck and James
Tylor's exhibition, Fire Country,
evoked an emotional response
in our audiences examining the
relationship between the physical
and cultural significance fire has
in Australia and on our landscape.
Following the disastrous 2019 fire
season, Selleck and Tylor explored
the burnt landscape and brought
their discoveries into the gallery
space, translating their experience
into furniture pieces and imagery.
Their work investigates, through a
contemporary lens, the potential to
engage in cultural fire practices for
a better managed future.
Our South Australian counterpart,
the JamFactory, facilitates
interdisciplinary practice among
emerging practitioners as part
of their Associate program.
The exhibition, Collide + Divide,
presented at Craft ACT in 2022
demonstrated the results of
a practice-led approach to
collaboration and experimentation.
The generation of ideas and
production of work was executed
by allowing their discipline and
expertise to inform each other’s
contributions which created
collaborative works featuring
hallmarks of either practice. This
skill sharing research amongst
fellow practitioners also creates
new and interesting ways of
making and viewing their work.
During 2021 Artists-in-Residence,
Valerie Kirk AM and Harriet
Schwarzrock, collaborated with
research partner Geoscience
Australia’s world-class National
Mineral and Fossil Collection. They
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