Loop

“Everywhere it’s the same, and everywhere it’s different: two hands with five fingers each (and other body parts), and a continuous loop of string”

Over time, Garland is gathering a creative community across the Indo-Pacific. This page is where you can stay in the loop with updates from our Friends and Circle. See here if you would like to be featured in this Loop.

Shahpura School of Phad Painting ✿ Coronavirus advice - Our April laurel goes to the Shahpura School of Phad Painting, including Vijay and Vivek Joshi, who produced a canvas that beautifully details the dos and don'ts in response to the coronavirus.

Spring will come 🌸 Planning for a post-coronavirus future - The world is beginning a lockdown that may last for months, if not for a year. In planning for life after coronavirus, Garland will track new models for craft practice in a brave new virtual world.

Life & Death ✿ An exhibition that designs its own demise - Life & Death is an exhibition curated by Dale Hardiman and Tom Skeehan which invites creative practitioners to create work which takes into account its own decay. Designer and researcher Guy Keulemans questions why we cling to objects despite their inevitable ephemerality.

Bakhiya: The beauty of the imperfect - Bakhiya is not just a form of sewing with long stitches. It also offers a sufi meditation on the beauty of the imperfect and fragility of life, as reflected in these poignant works at Threshold Art Gallery, Delhi. 

The Political-Poetic Journey of Two Métis/Cree Artists: Jesse Campbell and Michelle Poirier Brown - Lycia Trouton writes about two Canadian artists whose work reveals a flowering of Métis culture in response to the challenges of settler colonisation.

The power of wedding adornments - Khushbu Mathur itemises the rituals and adornments of a Hindu wedding, showing how love is exchanged through conduits of auspiciousness.

Adil Writer ✿ Clay dreams of love - Adil Writer presents a series of figures that evoke the fraught condition of love for the Parsi community specifically and India generally.

A post-digital threat out of the labyrinth: Christus Nobrega review - Pamela See finds that the embroidery exhibition Labirinto by Christus Nobrega offers a post-digital means of housing the past.

Zetta Kanta ✿ Slow art with rescue fleece - The Gippsland-based felt artist Zetta Kanta is inspired by fleece from a rescue farm, which embodies the value of slow art.

Fishing for future love in Laos - In keeping with the "craft of love" theme, our March laurel goes to a Lao fisherman, discovered by Samorn Sanixay, who crocheted a net for a future wife.

Seikatsu Kogei: Standard-issue craft - Related to our 生きている工芸 Ikiteiru kōgei (Living craft) issue, this exhibition at the Japan Foundation emphasises the beauty of ordinary handmade objects.

Promising messages in bottles from Canberra - The 2020 harvest of early-career craft artists in Canberra shows enormous promise.

Finding Mahtab and starting a new life - Khosro Mahinroosto tells how finding the legendary Baluchistan needle-worker changed his life and led to the establishment of Gileboom eco-lodge.

Christus Nóbrega ✿ Remaking the past with lace - Christus Nóbrega journeyed his ancestral homeland in Brazil and found local lace makers to recover his family history.

Bridget Kennedy ✿ A fragile beauty between the ashes - Our February Laurel goes to Sydney jeweller Bridget Kennedy, for a ring that reflects the tragedy that engulfs Australia in 2019-2020. The ring evokes the geometrical beauty of the beehive, while acknowledging the devastation wrought on the climate by use of fossil fuels.

The Kyrgyz yurt: Let the hearth not go out - Alymkozhoeva Kүlүm Shamievna, Issyk-Kul State Historic Cultural Reserve Museum, shares her extensive knowledge about the anatomy and rules of the yurt.

The craft wisdom of Kutch weaving - Fourth-generation Kutch weaver Rajan Vankar shares the craft wisdom of this unique textile tradition.

Namad rugs in Turkmen-Sahara - Hossein HajiAbaee proudly describes the carpets unique to north-eastern Iran.

Makar Sakranti: Festivals of gratitude across India - Khushbu Mathur shares her knowledge of the joyous harvest festivals happening across India in mid-January.

Review of A Cultural Economic Analysis of Craft - A new book on craft is an excellent resource for those working in cultural policy across the wider world.

For earlier posts, see here.