MAKING GROUND: COLLABORATION IN CRAFT
Whether it’s bending a piece of willow or moulding a piece of clay, every maker engages in a collaboration between themselves and their materials. Two contemporary makers who are highly conscious of this relationship are ceramicist Elaine Bolt and basketmaker Annemarie O’Sullivan, and they are just now coming to the end of a year-long collaboration of their own.
Since January 2016, both makers have been exploring their joint relationship with a disused brickworks site in Sussex, as part of ‘Making Ground’ – a collaborative, interdisciplinary residency funded by the Arts Council. For the past year both artists have produced a series of shared works both on the land and in studio. Soon, they will be celebrating this project with a week-long residency at Fabrica in Brighton, where they will host an artists’ talk on their experience with further collaborations with artists Rachel Henson, Alice Kettle and Helen Carnac.
O’Sullivan features in the current issue of Selvedge, where she gives an insight into how her environment influences her practice. Pushing basketmaking to its limits, she is known for her large-scale, at once fluid and geometric forms made from her own harvested willow. Similarly, Bolt treads the line between form and function with her ceramics, calling on suggestively mythical and historical uses of basic materials. Both makers’ works result in objects brimming with intrigue, and ready to tell the stories of their environments.
You can look forward to seeing what artwork emerges from this partnership in their forthcoming exhibition ‘Making Ground’ that will be held at the Studio Fusion Gallery in London’s Oxo Tower this March – a fitting urban site for works rooted in a disused brickworks site. This project calls into question what stories our ever-changing environments have to offer, and, through the works of these two makers, what answers its materials have to give.
https://makingground.org/
https://elainebolt.com/
http://www.annemarieosullivan.co.uk/
Since January 2016, both makers have been exploring their joint relationship with a disused brickworks site in Sussex, as part of ‘Making Ground’ – a collaborative, interdisciplinary residency funded by the Arts Council. For the past year both artists have produced a series of shared works both on the land and in studio. Soon, they will be celebrating this project with a week-long residency at Fabrica in Brighton, where they will host an artists’ talk on their experience with further collaborations with artists Rachel Henson, Alice Kettle and Helen Carnac.
O’Sullivan features in the current issue of Selvedge, where she gives an insight into how her environment influences her practice. Pushing basketmaking to its limits, she is known for her large-scale, at once fluid and geometric forms made from her own harvested willow. Similarly, Bolt treads the line between form and function with her ceramics, calling on suggestively mythical and historical uses of basic materials. Both makers’ works result in objects brimming with intrigue, and ready to tell the stories of their environments.
You can look forward to seeing what artwork emerges from this partnership in their forthcoming exhibition ‘Making Ground’ that will be held at the Studio Fusion Gallery in London’s Oxo Tower this March – a fitting urban site for works rooted in a disused brickworks site. This project calls into question what stories our ever-changing environments have to offer, and, through the works of these two makers, what answers its materials have to give.
https://makingground.org/
https://elainebolt.com/
http://www.annemarieosullivan.co.uk/