What about crafts : visual anatomy and curation of local craftsmanship

Abstract

This series of craftspeople study is a sequel of local craftsmanship exploration initiated by the author under an art collective, the Community Museum Project since 2007. The aim is to identify anonymous local craftspeople in an attempt to (visually) codify and disseminate their unspoken knowledge to a wider learning audience and design community . Efforts are also put into building relationships among craftspeople, designers and students so as to curate contemporary cross generational platforms for craft and design learning. The body of work constitutes a series of in depth study of the craftsmanship embedded in a variety of local handicraft trades, namely, the crafts of "white metal", "flower plate", "fire dragon", "woodwork", "funeral offering"," letterpress ", "rattan furniture" and "wooden cart"; The findings and visual outcomes of the study were disseminated through a co curated exhibition, entitled, What about Crafts? at the Innovation Tower Gallery, HK PolyU from 26 July to 24 September, 2014. (The project was funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust and co curated with a local NGO, the St. James Settlement Community Classroom); The project includes extensive documentation and findings, that were visually interpreted and displayed in form of an exhibition. Research and curatorial methodologies are developed in due course. Both the findings and methods are then disseminated through the corresponding community education workshops and other education platforms locally and overseas; Part of the exhibition content and artefacts were generated with students in a design subject of HKPolyU's school of Design, where a master metal craftsman was invited to conduct sessions in the course. This is the author's attempt to curate also the social relations among craftspeople, designers and students. To further study the spatial economic practices of the handicraft trades which are subjected to the pressure of urban renewal, the author published two initial case studies (2017), relating to that of the rattan furniture and wooden cart trades in Sham Shui Po.