Norman Weinstein in charles Darwin and the Arts Crafts

This is one of those posts that is so odd – and slightly confusing – that I only had to copy it here!

A Spanish designer'southward collaboration with Indigenous artists in a remote Top Terminate community has produced an unlikely and beautiful cross-cultural artwork on brandish at the NGV Triennial.

The slice, which combines ancient Ethnic weaving techniques with recycled materials of the modern world, is the piece of work of Alvaro Catalán de Ocón and Yolngu weavers from Bula'bula Arts in Ramingining.  (I had to expect it up!)

Ramingining is an Indigenous customs in the Northern Territory, Commonwealth of australia, 560 km east of Darwin. It is on the edge of the Arafura Swamp in Arnhem Country. The population is approximately 800 people, though this fluctuates and at that place is a significant housing shortage. More at Wikipedia

"I basically do production pattern, but quite recently I have been combining this way of doing it with craft, and mainly weaving," Mr Catalán de Ocón told ABC Radio Darwin's Liz Trevaskis from his studio in Barcelona.

With his PET Lamp project, Mr Catalán de Ocón travelled to v art centres in equally many continents, using recycled bottles and local weaving techniques to create brightly coloured lamp shades.

Only learning well-nigh the kinship systems in the East Arnhem Land customs prompted him to interruption with tradition.

Where previous collaborations had produced thousands of lamp shades, this i produced just two woven together by eight local women using native institute materials and ancient techniques.

The resulting works are large, irregularly shaped weavings in luminous, earthen tones, woven together according to the women'due south relationships to one another.

Project born from mission to creatively recycle

In 2011, Mr Catalán de Ocón was travelling through Colombia and became involved in an fine art project almost ascent levels of plastic waste in the Amazon River.

"They were interested in having my perspective equally a production designer, and I thought about instead of recycling, reusing, because there was no infrastructure in those areas for recycling, it was about turning the object into something else," he said.

The object in question was a PET bottle, which Mr Catalán de Ocón noted had a short shelf life compared to the time it took to decompose.

While he could not single-handedly fix the trouble of plastic waste matter, he idea he could employ intelligent product design to make a statement about information technology.

Cartoon inspiration from the shape of a Japanese tea whisk, Mr Catalán de Ocón recognised a similarity between sure looms and the shape of a plastic bottle that had been cutting to pieces.

"You have a knot, which is the screw peak, and then you have the torso of the bottle, which y'all can cutting in strips, and that becomes similar a loom you can weave onto," he said.

Taking this logic a step further, the product designer realised the issue of mounting plastic waste material and the art of weaving were both somewhat universal.

There are few crafts, he said, as ancient or widely practiced every bit textile weaving.

"So nosotros turned information technology from a container into a lamp through the apply of local craft, which was very strong in Colombia," he said.

"Information technology's two realities which can mix together."

He travelled from Colombia to Chile, Ethiopia and Japan, weaving lamp shades with disfigured plastic bottles and local designs.

In 2016, afterwards being deputed past the NGV to bring the project to Australia, he decided the project's side by side location would be Ramingining.

A cantankerous-cultural experience

Over half dozen weeks, Mr Catalán de Ocón became embedded in the remote customs, consulting and collaborating through long working days with the Bula'bula artists.

He likened the experience of living in the remote community (most iii days' bulldoze from Darwin) to travelling back in time.

"Lilliputian by little, we managed to get into that world.

"We know we merely really arrived in the very surface of it, merely you realise how deep it is and how different it is — the mode of understanding the land, the way of understanding life and time."

While the designer had produced about 15,000 lamps in previous workshops, Mr Catalán de Ocón decided this time they would work towards just two.

"They were telling u.s.a. their stories, nosotros were going out to the bush-league to pick up the materials, doing the whole procedure so we could spend a lot of time together," he said.

"At a certain point, each weaver did an private piece and we started joining them together according to family links and family bonds with the weavers which were doing the lamps."

One of the pieces is now on display at the NGV Triennial.

The other hangs in the studio in Barcelona where Mr Catalán de Ocón fields calls from weaver Lynette Birriran every couple of days — an ongoing touchstone betwixt their ii very different worlds.

"She tells u.s. what is happening in Ramingining, what the weather condition is similar, how are things going on," the designer said.

"We tell them how is the lamp, if information technology'southward showing hither or there.

"She enjoys it a lot — we transport pictures and it'southward quite an experience."

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Source: https://julzcrafts.com/2018/03/