We are happy to announce a talk event by Eva Masterman, and Jackson Sprague, our residency artists from London, at our office. Their talk will be followed by a discussion with Roger McDonald from AIT. Masterman, and Sprague will be in Japan until March 2017, as part of the collaborative residency program between Camden Arts Center (London) and AIT, with a support from the Agency for Cultural Affairs Government of Japan.
An artist talk by AIT residency artists.
Left: Jackson Sprague, My hand on your eye, 2017, Plywood, acrylic, Coutesy of Breese Little
Right: Eva Masterman, Used, 2016, Ceramic, Steel, Kiln Props, trolley
AIT is very pleased to host two UK based artists in collaboration with Camden Arts Center. This collaboration has focused on the exchanges and dialogues between contemporary art practice and ceramics.The wider issues which this residency explores are the ways in which art today is an expanded field incorporating many different fields and approaches. One of these has been a renewed interest in the field of craft, and its many implications concerning the hand-made, traditional materials such as clay and an array of historical references and figures which have usually been left out of art discourse.
The title of this talk indeed references two of these figures: the founder of the Japanese Mingei Movement Yanagi Soetsu and the title of his collected writings ‘The Unknown Craftsman’ (1972), which is also a fascinating point of dialogue between the English potter Bernard Leach and Japanese ideas about art and craft, and the Arts and Crafts Movement of John Ruskin and William Morris in the UK. This unique historical dialogue is one of the reasons we wanted to create a collaborative residency with Camden focused on the arts and crafts dialogue today.
The two artists will each present a thirty minute slideshow about their works, followed by a discussion moderated by Roger McDonald from AIT about some of the wider issues surrounding art and craft, art and issues of use-value, domesticity, social function, the hand-made and ideas about presence and time, and the relevance of historical references. These issues are also very much a part of the 2017 MAD curriculum and its Holistic perspective. Several lectures will focus on similar issues throughout 2017.
We hope that you can join us.
Moderator: Roger McDonald [AIT]
Interpreter: Satoshi Ikeda
"Unknown Arts & Crafts"
- Artist Talk by British artists, Eva Masterman and Jackson Sprague
followed by a discussion with Roger McDonald [AIT]
Date and Time: 19:00-21:00, Friday, February 17, 2017 (18:30 Door open)
Venue: Daikanyama AIT Room
Capacity: 20 seats *Booking required
Moderator: Roger McDonald [AIT]
Translation: Satoshi Ikeda
Organized by Arts Initiative Tokyo
*Agency for Cultural Affairs Government of Japan in the fiscal 2016
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Eva MastermanInvestigation into material and process led practices through cross-disciplinary workshops, seminars and writing, predicates Materman's art-work. This dual approach of direct research into the boundaries and preconceptions of the visual arts, coupled with her own artistic practice, allows Masterman to create a critical discourse that surrounds her own sculptural territory; one that sits firmly in the middle of the 'expanded field' of inter-disciplinary, material-specific making and fine art sculpture.
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Jackson SpragueSprague's work plays-up tensions between aesthetic and functional, sculptural and pictorial, lasting and ephemeral: a room divider performs as a painting, a painting on the wall is also a plaster cast sculpture, painted cardboard appears to be ceramic. These ambiguities are characteristic of relationships, physical and psychical, Sprague's work tenderly exposes.