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pin UP Opening Talk
Posted: 2 December 2008 | Permalink
Opening of pin UP, 25 November 2008
Grace Cochrane, curator and writer, former senior curator of decorative arts and design, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.
This is a terrific exhibition, and I’m very happy to have the opportunity to speak about what sits behind the making and meaning of these pieces grouped in the theme of Pin-up – around 700 pieces, depending how you count the groups!
As you know, the exhibition shows the work of first, second and third year students of the Jewellery and Object Design course at the Design Centre at Enmore. This is a time for personal as well as public review for those in the first two years, and the final exhibition for third-years, as they now embark on their careers.
Catherine Harrington talks in the foreword to the catalogue about how value often comes from what we as audiences might make of things, from our own knowledge and imagination. That’s why we choose what we want to wear and have around us. And the entires in the catalogue give information about what each person is thinking about.
I’d like to talk also a little about what else sits behind the making of this work, because it says a lot about the kind of program and teaching offered in this school, and how the students have responded to it.
Much of my inside knowledge comes from talks with a group of third-year students involved in putting the exhibition together last week.
Clearly students don’t enrol in a course like this just to indulge their own fancies (not immediately anyway); they come to be challenged in their ideas and to develop skills and knowledge that help to realise them.
The program is devised to provide just that. And it is hard and challenging work.
In each year there are courses in workshop skills: over time these progressively cover working with different materials, cutting and casting, soldering and saw-piercing, raising and fabricating, various processes for surface decoration and colouring, as well as lathe-work, hydraulic pressing and progressively a range of computer-aided design skills.
Then alongside those workshops are courses called ‘conceptual realisation’: having an idea and making it work. These are to do with finding triggers for ideas, looking at symbolic meanings alongside functional concerns, and researching and understanding the history of the field of practice and developing concepts into forms.
You will see examples that have come out of these project briefs around the gallery. (I’ve just summarised fragments of some of these project briefs, but they give you some idea of the complex challenges. And thanks to lecturer Melinda Young for following up with details.)
First years:
Eggcups: They are asked…‘Which came first: chicken or egg? You may find inspiration…in the…construction used in architecture, in woodwork or origami. You may also find it in opposites such as old and new, masculine and feminine, natural and man made, traditional and unconventional, chaos and order, decadence and austerity, pomposity and simplicity…. Empty a raw egg of its content and keep the eggshell in class throughout this project.’
Rings, based on ideas from Fairytales:
‘Design and make two separate rings, one inspired by the visual or sensual aesthetics of a fairytale, and the other using philosophical/ metaphysical ideas and symbols to explore your fairytale.’
Sculptural form: Shift
Using hollowforming, ‘choose one sculpture created in the last fifty years and re-interpret the work from the viewpoint of your personal understanding…Select a portion of the sculpture and ‘shift’ it to gain new insights and interpretations of the object, this ‘shifting’ could be of an aesthetic and/or conceptual nature.’
The bag: ‘The bag can be seen as a ‘civilising’ object with contradictions in its role in society…a purely decorative accessory, a symbol of wealth and status, a holder of mysteries and secrets, or the utilitarian tool distinguishing humans from animals…’
Second years:
Cutlery: ‘Think about and question the ritual and ceremonial nature associated with formal eating arrangements; emphasise the ritualistic aspect of each individual object without subverting its utility…’
Postcard: An exercise in thinking about real and symbolic places and spaces…physical to mental places… they’re reminded that memory is a combination of illusion and reality. ‘The work can be either a wearable or a small scale object… You will use the technique of hydraulic pressing and welding…’
Ugly-beautiful: Pleasurable apprehension:
‘Something that seems to be ugly overall or beautiful overall, but has some beautiful or ugly feature that redeems or compromises the effect.’
Distinctive individual: ‘Use the technical process of casting create multiples where you at once express ‘the crowd’ and on closer scrutiny reveal the ‘individual’.’
Third years:
Own projects: by this time they develop their own projects alongside professional development programs that include gallery visits, and researching contemporary practitioners and interviewing them.
As well as personal interpretive ‘conceptual realisation’ work, there’s also a personal project for designing and making for production: this involves a 1000-word proposal, and then a body of work comprising multiples or variations that are based on a single foundation piece. They have to work out a production timeline, a budget and provide details of possible contracting arrangements.
In 2007 the school initiated a Production Initiative where each year one student work is selected to be made as a limited production run. The first in 2007 was an egg cup, followed in 2008 by a pin and matching earrings.
All pieces are made in house by the staff, and the students are responsible for the marketing and promotion of the pieces, while the student whose work was selected receives a royalty. All funds raised go back to the students to help with the end of year exhibition and catalogue. This is a great project that also gives students a very practical example of designing for production.
So around the gallery you will see how students have responded to these projects in their own way. Director Catherine Harrington says in the catalogue foreword: ‘The most genuine work derives from one’s nature… It certainly includes the obvious and observable, such as behavioural characteristics, temperament and personality. What is harder to describe about one’s nature are invisible personal choices of one sort or another which express essential needs and will have brought about something altogether undetectable but nevertheless fundamental.’
Each time, they have to research into history and theory; and into form and function and meaning, to come up with a proposal. They have to do tests and samples; drawings and prototypes, then come together in the group and explain it and present it with a professionally written and presented proposal. In this way, over the three years, they tell me, they develop confidence in self-criticism, and also in speaking honestly to their colleagues about their work, and in turn taking criticism – and praise – from others. This process is as much of value to developing a career in this field, as is the development of ideas and the making of the pieces.
They realise they learn never to be satisfied too easily or too early.
Along these same lines, it is an interesting characteristic of this course at Enmore, that a major part of the program for third years is the management of the exhibition itself. They don’t just meet around a coffee in the workshop a couple of weeks beforehand – they start planning from the beginning of the year. They work as a group; each person comes up with a proposal for the concept, the title, the flier design, the exhibition design and so on, and this is discussed an voted on. Then people are delegated to manage all those tasks, including preparing the (excellent) catalogue, organising the catering, the sponsorship, working out price lists, finding a speaker and corresponding with them, building the display, sending out invitations, working on the website, marketing and so on.
This exhibition is entitled ‘Pin-up’, and lecturer Diane Appleby talks in the catalogue about the many stages of pinning up in the process of designing and making, from the first flash of inspiration to mock ups and drafts, with revisions, presentations, and then the final pin-up, as with the exhibition tonight, where all the works are attached (often by their pins) to sheets of paper on the wall and in the cases. The collage of papers on one wall also represent the many stages in which paper is used as part of this process – you can imagine each piece is potentially a note, a sketch, a summary, an explanation, an idea.
So what a useful experience to go through. By the end of three years, graduates from here are not only taking away with them a rigorous critical and practical approach to their work, but also professional experience of exhibition management. Interesting also, is the mix of previous professions already present in these graduates: as well as those directly from school, and some who have practiced as jewellers, there’s an economist, an insurance assessor, a marine biologist, interior designer, industrial designer, a fitter and turner, an architect and a landscape architect – and include a number of international students. This group is the beginning of a very sound network of peers and mentors and friends, whom I know will support one another whichever path each takes from here on.
Included in this network is the staff here at Enmore. While I know many of them, this time I talked to the students about the exhibition, because this was part of the professional exercise. It was interesting to hear how they value the rigour of the program and the way the staff devise and manage the projects. ‘Trust’ was a word they used; they trust their teachers for their understanding of what’s needed, and the way they go about it, and believe in them because they are practitioners in their own right, taking their place in the wider jewellery and metal-smithing community. So, quite apart from the diversity of ideas and forms, and the quality of the work on exhibition here, I know that each year students graduate with the experience of important related skills that will stand them in good stead.
Thanks Andrea and Oliver, and Zoe, for your time, and also those other of your colleagues I met briefly. Congratulations to those in all years for this display of your work, and especially to the third years for planning the exhibition. All the very best for whatever the future has in store for you – and for what you make of it.