We would like to invite you to another lecture of the Bydgoszcz Academy of Art.
Time for Craftsmanship
The study of craftsmanship in contemporary contexts
The term CRAFTSMANSHIP is nowadays being inflected in every possible way. Once again spoken with pride in all languages. The American art historian Glenn Adamson, at an international conference “WYTWÓRCZO/MAKINGLY” three years ago on new contexts of craftsmanship, focused on its supportive function. This perspective helps to look at the issue of interest very broadly. It makes it possible to consider this issue in contexts distant from each other. The more obvious ones like design, fashion and the related climate catastrophe. Visual arts which for centuries relegated crafts to the status of inferior, decorative, applied art. There are also contexts that are more abstract, such as the embodied knowledge, metis, intuition and bodily intelligence characteristic of artisanal ‘virtuosity’ not yet ‘hacked’ by the AI industry. Not far from it is the issue of mental health, and here crafts have proven to be an excellent supportive ‘cure’. And finally, of particular interest to me today are feminist readings of craftsmanship, silent one-woman protests, mass assemblies and guerilla actions, where the craft practice of DIY becomes a symbol or tool of its course.
Will we be able to exhaust all the contexts among the examples listed? Certainly not. This is a deliberate strategy. My ambition is to inspire you to explore. I will bring books with marked quotations, examples of my own work and even offer a small task that I will ask the lecture participants to complete during the lecture. All to encourage action! To encourage the search for one’s own new context of craft practices.
Alicja Patanowska – potter, visual artist, designer and doctor of arts. The knowledge of the body acquired through direct contact with the material is central to her artistic and design practice. She combines art and design. Her response to the escalating chaos of consumption is to incorporate a non-anthropocentric perspective into the human relationship with the world. Fan of plants and barter. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław and the Royal College of Art in London. She has won the Audience Award of the 18th Survival Art Review (2021), the Franz Award (2019), the Mazda Design Award (2018), the Gazeta Wyborcza WARTO Award (2017) and the British Glass Biennale (2015), among others. Scholarship holder of, among others, the Młoda Polska Programme and the J. Grotowski scholarship. Her works are part of the art and design collections of, among others, the National Museum in Kraków, the art collection of the Hotel Europejski, and the Shanghai Museum of Glass. Her products over the years have been available at the Barbican Centre and TATE Modern in London, among others. She has participated in over 100 exhibitions, including in the UK, Denmark, Ireland, Korea, Germany, Azerbaijan, Sweden, Finland, China, Brazil.
22.02.2023, 6pm
Gdańska 20
