Curator: Stephen Knott
CoCurator: Maria C. Havstam
For this thematically-led iteration of Tendenser (2018) the aim is to explore the various ways in which craft is experienced in time, drawing attention to daily rhythms, the momentary, and the ongoing. With a view to get behind the finished, pristine object, the exhibition foregrounds process, the experience (or phenomenology) of making, and the complexity of exercising skilled labour in challenging economic environments.
We expect objects to which the label ‘craft’ is applied to be distinguished by the care, attention, dexterity, and, ultimately the freedom to expend as much time as is needed in making them. Romantics, from John Ruskin on, bemoan elements of modern life, such as standardisation, repeatability, or the division of labour that interfere with this mode of production. Yet craftspeople can’t escape time and are continually subject to its dictates: to deliver work on time, to hurry up, to fit their work around other commitments, and even take time out.In addition, the title of the exhibition is intended to implicate the viewer: how much time do audiences have to spend with the exhibits. Like many craftspeople, viewers too are under time pressure.
The exhibition will be arranged around familiar units of time from works that capture the instantaneous ‘moment’ of production, to those that document and explore the daily rhythms of contemporary making, including breaks and diversions. The exhibition will then move onto longer units of time: the materiality of Scandanavian seasonality and works that remain unfinished.
Artists: Aslaug M. Juliussen (NO), Daniel Peltz (SE/US), Felieke van der Leest (NL/NO), Jenny Nordberg (SE), Karin Roy Andersson (SE), Kari Steihaug (NO), Mikkel Wettre (NO), Silo Studio (UK), Sissi Westerberg (SE), Sonja Löfgren (FI), Sophie Hanagarth (CH), TEXAS (NO), Unndór Egill Jónsson (IS)
