Two exhibitions soon to open at Craft ACT
Lou Harriss, Smallscape Bedsides
The Hidden Sex + Emerging Contemporaries
January 31 – March 16, 2019
Julie Ryder: The Hidden Sex
A truly gorgeous outcome of rigorous research, The Hidden Sex speaks to the essential, overlooked contribution of women to science in the nineteenth century. Julie Ryder became fascinated by two scrapbooks of pressed seaweeds at the National Museum of Australia in 2016, and her curiosity about the unknown collectors led to residencies in Australia and Ireland, where she mused upon history, science and culture. Seaweeds are cryptogams, plants with no seeds or flowers (literally, 'hidden sex'), and Ryder has used them in her textile work to act as metaphors for the work of women as nineteenth-century citizen scientists: forbidden to attend university, they provided unpaid labour that unfurled many of the wonders of the botanical world.
Emerging Contemporaries
Craft ACT is proud to present a showcase of the best and brightest from the Canberra region, selected from 2018 graduates and emerging practitioners. Graduates have been selected from the Australian National University, University of Canberra, Canberra Institute of Technology, Canberra Potters Society, and Sturt Craft Centre, representing the breadth of contemporary craft and design practice with furniture, jewellery, textiles, ceramics, glass, and mixed media.
Also included are the participants of Craft ACT's exciting 2018 Indigenous Jewellery Project, a program of workshops fostering contemporary indigenous jewellery production, partnered by our esteemed APM, Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello (Kemarre Arts), curator and writer Emily McCulloch Childs, and the ANU School of Art and Design Gold and Silversmithing Workshop.
Join us before the launch of the Emerging Contemporaries exhibition visitors are invited to an informal artist talk by a group of the exhibiting artists. These designer-makers have been hand-picked by Craft ACT because of their thoughtful, fresh approach to traditional processes.
The talk will be at 5:30pm, with the opening starting at 6pm, featuring opening speaker Dr Kristen Wehner, Director, Photoaccess. She will also be opening the accompanying exhibition, Julie Ryder: The Hidden Sex.
More information at www.craftact.org.au
Craft ACT, Level 1, North Building, 180 London Circuit Civic, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 260