Fine Arts Presentation Series

Fri., Jan. 23, 2015 3:30 p.m. - Fri., Jan. 23, 2015 5:00 p.m.

Location: University of Regina - ED 191

Messing with Making and Meaning in Current Craft Media

Ruth Chambers, Professor, Visual Arts

Drawing from a range of current artworks in which craft media skills and processes are employed to realize ideas, this talk will look at strategies employed by some makers in which material and process-based virtuosity are concurrently highly invested and disavowed. What might be read as conflict or ambiguity about craft will be discussed and a deliberate approach to making, to consciously re-skilling, to incorporating, for example, idiosyncracity, awkwardness and irreverence – and the same time, savoir-faire – as a way of re-locating and re-claiming the handmade object, particularly in relation to commodity culture.

Bio

Ruth Chambers is an artist and Professor of Visual Arts. During her recent sabbatical she worked on small compositions of fragile, handmade porcelain objects in an attempt to address ideas of beauty, consumption, and temporality through the tradition of the still life.