ROISIN
DE BUITLEAR, BETWEEN ART AND INDUSTRY, NATIONAL CRAFT GALLERY
Between Art and Industry offers an opportunity to explore the shifting relationships between craft and industry through the use of evocative imagery utilising text, film and sound. With the advent of globalisation, methods of manufacturing have shifted dramatically. Outsourcing of labour to other countries has resulted in decline of industrial manufacturing in Ireland and the UK. This exhibition (curated by Ann Mulrooney) reflects on those trends, on their consequences and costs, and on the potential for sustainable, highly skilled small-scale production to offer a new model.
Between Art and Industry offers an opportunity to explore the shifting relationships between craft and industry through the use of evocative imagery utilising text, film and sound. With the advent of globalisation, methods of manufacturing have shifted dramatically. Outsourcing of labour to other countries has resulted in decline of industrial manufacturing in Ireland and the UK. This exhibition (curated by Ann Mulrooney) reflects on those trends, on their consequences and costs, and on the potential for sustainable, highly skilled small-scale production to offer a new model.
Róisín
de Buitléar has a long association with Waterford Crystal, since her
student days at NCAD. As a glass artist, she organised many
collaborations with the factory, forming personal relationships with
some of the 4000 workers, blowers, cutters, engravers and sculptors
employed there. In 2009, with the help of the Crafts Council of Ireland
Irish Craft Bursary, de Buitléar began investigating the history of
Irish glass, and recorded oral histories of the factory workers. During
this period, Waterford Crystal went into receivership and the contents
of the KIlbarry plant were sold, a process Buitléar documented
photographically during the open viewing.
In a collaborative process that is also an important part of the work, all of the pieces for this exhibition have been made by hand in Waterford at Irish Handmade Glass, a small workshop established after the closure of the Kilbarry plant by four master glassmakers who originally trained in Waterford Crystal. This work is about the celebration of skill that still exists in the country, and not a lament for its loss.
In a collaborative process that is also an important part of the work, all of the pieces for this exhibition have been made by hand in Waterford at Irish Handmade Glass, a small workshop established after the closure of the Kilbarry plant by four master glassmakers who originally trained in Waterford Crystal. This work is about the celebration of skill that still exists in the country, and not a lament for its loss.
W: http://roisindebuitlear.com/roisin-de-buitlear/between-art-and-industry-exhibition-at-the-national-craft-gallery-of-ireland-kilkenny-may-25th-4th-july-2012/
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