Fran Allison - Collabration vs collective

Question:

1. Define collaboration and how it differs from a collective.
2. How have these terms influenced Fran's practice.
3. Give an example of collaborative art practice.

Fran Allison, a jeweller who introduced us some quite new terms in this week- collaboration and collective."In the last 10 years or so collaborative art practices have moved in to the mainstream of cultural production, and collaboration is now largely taken for granted as one of the numerous ways that artists can choose to operate. "(http://collabarts.org/) Actually, this is the second time that we get in touch with the term collaboration and the first time is with Dion. Interesting thing I find is, when we hear of the collaboration relate to art practice, the first things that usually come to our mind are some large projects, like Dion's public sculpture projects finished with other artists. And I didn't realise that jewellery design needs lot's of collaboration as well. In any case, collaboration has spilled over into many kinds of art practices.

Fran mentioned the difference between collaboration and collective. Collaboration is like some people who organize a group and doing a piece of work together, they share each other's ideas and give assist to the members. Once the project is finished and show to the public, people will recognized that the artwork is done by a whole group, which means that the authorship is not individual. However, collective is more like individuals who working with different projects in a same space or one studio, but the authorship of artworks still remain a personal names. Each person has their own work to do and basically their do not share ideas with other people .

Fran Allison once worked in a New Zealand jeweller group called "Weeds" with other three artists. Although the Weeds has gone, but I can still find some great jewellery productions from the Internet. It looks like the theme of these productions basically is plant, and it's easy to find some beautiful patterns on different jewellery. For Fran, Weeds is a group where she practised numerous experiments, got some experiences of doing collaboration project.

During the lecture, Fran introduced a series of collaborative and collective groups. I particularly like the group UNNATURAL, NATURALLY. This group is consisted by two artists called Lauren Simeoni and Melinda Young who are living different cites. "Melinda Young has a Master of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts and is currently a full time teacher at Design Centre Enmore. Simeoni has a Bachelor of Arts (Gold and Silversmithing) from Canberra School of Art and undertook a Design Associateship at the JamFactory in Adelaide."(http://www.jewelleryandobjects.org/news/)

I think this group is quite special. It's great that although they are living in different places, but they can still cooperate very effectively. Fran said they share materials together by sending package and if I was hearing it correctly, they also using the same schedule. And their artworks involved a wide range of elements. They make a lot of artificial plant foilages by using different materials. And in my opinion, one more feature that make UNNATURAL, NATURALLY's works different from other collective group is that this two artists have two very different life background, and they working between two cities. So, I think their works can reflect two different life background of this two artists as well.

Deborah Crowe's Lecture

Blog Qustion: What is Deborah Crowe's 'one idea' made up from and how does it keep recycling in various works?

We had a lecture from Deborah Crowe this week. In the lecture, she displayed some of her own practice and some other artists' work that impacted her, gave her inspiration. Deborah is a textile designer and works are more about 3D construction and space. And what I need to emphasize is that when we look through Deborah's work, it's easy to see that some of her works are not actually designed or made of textile. But we can still find the elements of textile like textile's texture in many of her works. It's very interesting to see that she using other art forms to reflect and present textile design.

One thing I learned from Deborah is that in her working process, she usually make lot's of hand-drawing or models as planning and drafting. I think it's a important part of artwork making. A designer can not just grab some materials and start making objects without a thorough plan. In Deborah's statement" Most architectural drawings and models emphasise edges, borders and boundaries, delineating shifts from one material or component to another or from solid matter to empty space." Deborah trying to use materials that are connected and woven together, I saw some experiments include hand-drawing, models and even some graphic designs made through computer software. These are all some really nice draft plans and experiments for making a great work.

I think Deborah extended her ideas to a very broad area, and the materials she handles are wide, such as metal, digital, paper, print, sound, light and so on. For example, in her work 'shift 2000', she hang up several 3D forms around a space, the forms are included some textile design factors, like the woven lines and grids. With the lights on the top, a strong shadow can be seen on the white wall. So, in this way, viewers can enjoy the combination of real object and visional images around the contradiction environment. I think this sort of works really influenced me. Because in my own works, no matter printing or sculpture, I usually just use the materials I familiar with and I never think about try to use something else to present my idea. And I think I should try to find some other materials to work with and extend my idea broader.

I also like Deborah's body wear art works, especially the "collared1999" . They are composite of few elements-object, texture of the cover, photography and so on. These works reminded me of my own practice last semester, in the jewellery courses, what we need to do was make containers that can be touched on the body. The "collared1999", when people look at the object, it's hard to imagine that is something can be wore on the body. But when we looking at the ones with red line and grids, they are really something look like scarf or napkin.

And I think this series of containment works were impacted by an artist called Fraser Crowe. Because I can see some same elements between two artists' works. Crowe also like to make something looks like a container and contain part of human body.

From Deborah's lecture, what I been benefited most is how she come up with good idea and use various of materials to present her idea and play with the construction and space. In the future, what I exactly should do is try to work with more different materials and do more experiments for my own practice.