In the making

Ward Bastian, Jolie Bird, Nicole Burisch, Hyang Cho, Dean Drever, MacKenzie Kelly-Frère, Stephen Holman, Robin Lambert, Wednesday Lupypciw, Brendan McGillicuddy, Tyler Rock, Jenna Stanton, and Pavitra Wickramasinghe

Curated by Diana Sherlock

In the making, a group exhibition of Alberta College of Art + Design alumni, investigates conceptual intersections between contemporary craft and emerging digital media. The works span a diverse range of disciplines—photography, performance, video and sound installation, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, jewelry and glass—and reflect the ongoing influence of technology on ways of making and ways of thinking about the contemporary context.

In light of the new School of Craft and Emerging Media at ACAD, In the making creates a space for research and dialogue about how ways of making inform ways of thinking across disciplines. The broader influence of artistic production on other aspects of society including industry, media, economy, language and identity will also be considered. The exhibition assumes the centrality of the processes of making to art, craft and design. Perhaps more than ever, interdisciplinary and post-studio art production has lead contemporary artists to demonstrate that making is thinking, and together they not only reflect, but affect the direction of politics and society.

Craft theorist Glenn Adamson argues in his new book, The Invention of Craft, that intersections between handwork and modes of technological production, especially modern industrial production, form the basis of the origins of modern craft. Yet craft was quickly framed as industry’s other. In the making posits that technology and ways of making are not merely tools or processes required to get the job done, but are an integral conceptual extension of the project that allows the artist to produce objects and ideas they would not have been able to produce otherwise.

In its title, In the making alludes to the ongoing process of invention in both handwork and emerging technologies. The exhibition aims to highlight a diverse range of related research and practice produced recently by artists who are interested in inventing new ways to think about the world through processes of making, regardless of discipline. Although the sample of artists and works in the exhibition is small given the college’s long history of successful alumni, the diversity of practices provides a good sense of how these artists engage current theoretical ideas about art, craft and design that are also in the making.

This travelling exhibition is the first of a series of Alberta College of Art + Design curated touring alumni exhibitions that will animate critical conversations about contemporary art, craft and design and incite creative partnerships regionally, nationally and internationally.

The curator would like to acknowledge the important support of TD Insurance Meloche Monnex, Calgary 2012, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Arts Development, the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art + Design, an anonymous donor, and the artists for their participation.