Beware the treachery of words, Mrs Sparrow.
They mean one thing to one person and the opposite to another. ₁

The exhibition, The Crafted Object 1960s-1980s at the National Gallery of Australia, provides a valuable opportunity for many of us to have a renewed look at the craft work of this period, and for others to see a body of work from this period for the first time. But more importantly it confronts us with the question of what such work is collectively named, and why we too often choose titles which convey so little and which evade commitment.

The Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas is the title of an upcoming exhibition at the Hirsshorn Museum in Washington DC. It was promoted on posters in the format used to title this essay, and thus visually represents the breadth of possibilities conveyed by a somewhat illegible rendition of the word 'ideas' and the evasiveness inherent in the word 'object'.

And what is being conveyed by the word 'object' when it is used to describe the work of craftspeople? From its first significant recognition, Australian craft practice has battled to find acceptance as an art practice and has struggled with finding a relevant language of debate and description, with the word 'craft' being the most contentious, and now the increasing use of the word 'object' to describe individual pieces of craft work.

The word 'object' has an etymological source which seems to me to negate the essence of what craftspeople seek to express through their work. 'Object' as verb is at least an active, or possibly reactive, response to something; but to 'be objective' implies a desire to remain uninvolved, to reserve a right to independence without the intrusion of subjective views and attitudes, and an 'object' seems to me to imply a work disassociated from any context.; is this what a craftsperson expresses through their work? Do the collected works in The Crafted Object 1960s-1980s exhibition stand in objective isolation or hasn't the curator, Robert Bell, sought an interrelationship of the works to amplify our understanding of their social and chronological environment during the 1960s to 1980s in Australia? Aren't they more than 'objects'?

A brief backward look at the history of craft practice in Australia could lead us to a preferred contemporary understanding of an art practice which many of us value so highly.

In 1901, the year that Australia emerged as a nation, John Sulman (later Sir John), a Trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW, convinced his unwilling fellow trustees to add new Australian craft to the Gallery's collection of fine art. This was a significant recognition of the quality and relevance of craft work in Australia at that time. Of course there had been craftsmen and women practicing in Australia since the beginning of white settlement,₂ however, prior to Federation, there was no deliberate attempt to express, through its various craft practices, the unique and separate identity of Australia from its European models.

Following 1901, Australian craft work is identifiably exploring national identity. While the philosophies and attitudes of the English Arts & Crafts Movement were stimulating a new interest in the skills and qualities of craft work, it is simplistic to assume that it was the driving force behind the development of the Australian craft movement. The Australian craftsperson differed markedly from the model of the craft artisan championed by William Morris and John Ruskin. National enthusiasm at that time was a stimulus to their independence and initiative. ₂ They were intensely patriotic and wanted to develop a national artform using indigenous fauna and flora as decoration and Australian materials as medium. While their work in major public collections attests to this desire, and is important historically and artistically, at that time they battled to gain professional recognition. 'Craft' was generally ascribed to 'women's work' which omitted the many fine craftsmen of the period.

Australia's involvement in international events during the first half of the twentieth century inevitably influenced the direction of social attitudes in the 1960s-1980s. Australia emerged from World War I in 1918 with a firm appreciation for its points of difference from Britain. By the end of World War II in 1945 our society entered a new era of change. Post-war economic re-construction led to a relatively stable economy, expanded manufacturing and thus secure employment. The post-war immigration program increased the numbers and cultural breadth of migrants. Australia had always benefited from immigrants from many different parts of the world, and the arts in particular benefited by the mix of traditions, practices and attitudes. Opportunities for training offered to returned servicemen saw many enter art school. These were then to provide the necessary art teaching skills required by the end of the 1950s for the maturing, young people of the post-war, baby boom. Art schools multiplied and the possibility to earn a moderate living as a professional artist or craft person began to seem realistic.

Grace Cochrane wrote that by the 1960s the visual arts world associated works made with skill and care with lack of originality; and that 'the term 'the crafts' became used as an umbrella term of unity, because the 'fine arts' world tended to consider little other than painting and sculpture as art.' ₄ Australia therefore struggled for a unified language and philosophic position for 'the crafts' and craft media histories and traditions had not needed such unity prior to this time. Cochrane continues her argument, writing that in such a vacuum 'the craft world adopted the aspirations and language of the art world in an effort to validate their practice'. Such an adoption was unfortunate as the visual arts at that time were increasingly adopting post modern philosophies and discourse and the primacy of head over hands which exacerbated the differences in practice between visual artists and craftspeople. It also means that the collective term is applied retrospectively to categorise craft work made prior to this period.

Simultaneously there was a growing understanding of the diversity and originality of indigenous art practices. While there were attempts to impose western classifications of art practices on indigenous arts, fortunately this was only moderately successful. While the division of the crafts and visual arts into separate Australia Council boards was necessary to ensure equal support and recognition, the Aboriginal Arts Board funded indigenous arts on the basis of excellence and need without practice specificity.

Unfortunately the need to classify work is still led by institutions such as art schools, public galleries, museums and funding bodies. This is necessitated by the specificity of institutions and the access to resources. In 2006 contemporary visual art and crafts practices have diffuse edges as they move fluidly across mediums and disciplines, and in fact this could be said across the broader spectrum of the arts. Robert Bell writes in his essay, 'this exhibition focuses on the period from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, when a revival of studio craft practices opened up new possibilities for expression in the visual arts in Australia.' It did more than that, it opened paths of dialogue between different cultural traditions, it critiqued the everyday, and it critiqued the traditional, metaphorical image.

The languages of materials, processes and cultural traditions are inherently important to much craft work, and the collected works in this exhibition attest to this. The crafting of pottery, textiles, metals or wood describes the makers insightful and knowledgeable choice of approach to such work, and while 'the meticulously crafted novel' or 'the perceptive crafting of dialogue in a film' provide insights into these art works, it has never seemed praiseworthy to talk of 'the meticulously crafted object'. And here we return to the beginning of this essay, the use of the word 'object' to collectively describe a group of crafted work made over some two decades. Yes, the crafting of this work is an important aspect of its rationale; it was through process that each maker explored meaning. However, the dilemma described by Cochrane, that of arbitrarily gathering such work under a collective noun, 'craft' has led to the collective grouping of such work in an exhibition; and an inability to describe what each work individually represents has led to the collective term 'objects'. Do these works have more than a chronology in common? Craft work of this period did not have a mono-theory. Instead practitioners were dis-mantling many traditions of form, process and aesthetic using a range of media. It was a period of experimentation; this included experimenting with process, materials and technology, and intense dialogue with similar experimenters internationally. In spite of years of debate and reams of written argument the shortcoming of language to discuss craft practice remains. This exhibition has thrust this shortcoming into the daylight; what is the 'crafted object'? What can we understand from this? When, as a few of the works in the exhibition illustrate, craftspeople deliberately work outside the traditional skill and aesthetic of a medium, there can be little under standing of this work unless there is also an understanding of why such an omission is being made.

Are we approaching a more discursive mode of considering art and craft work? Recently installed exhibitions at The National Gallery of Australia integrate 2 and 3-dimensinal works based on period rather than practice. This may be a beginning of considering the broad sweep of art practices of the twentieth century without the constraint of categorisation.

Gillian McCracken
November 2006

Gillian McCracken is a freelance writer and curator.

Footnotes

1. These are the words of Ahab from Ahab's Wife, Sena Jeter Naslund, HarperCollins Publishers 1999
2. Indigenous artwork is not being neglected in this argument, but at the time of Federation Indigenous work with few exceptions was not understood or recognized.
3. Further information about craft practice in this period may be found in the catalogue, Social Riches - The Society of Arts & Crafts of NSW 1906-2006, Manly Art Gallery & Museum 2006
4. The term 'the crafts' was unlikely to have been applied to the work championed by John Sulman; more likely the work was described by its process such as pottery, metalwork, pokerwork etc. In Organising for Change, The Crafts Movement in Australia: a history, Grace Cochrane discusses many of the international factors which were contributing to changes in the Australian art environment in the 1960s.

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