lizz aston: Love Lace International Lace Award Exhibition @ the Powerhouse Museum

As I mentioned in the last post, I am going to start updating you on all the great exhibitions I have seen over the course of the past month. The most significant of these is an exhibition that I had the incredible opportunity to be a part of during Sydney Design week at the Powerhouse Museum.
The preparation for Love Lace from initial proposal to making and shipping the work and finally flying out to Australia has been almost a year and a half in the making!

I can't even begin to describe the amount of anticipation and anxiety that has gone into the undertakings involved in making work for the exhibition, as well as shipping it internationally for the first time, showing up for the final installation check, as well as private and public openings. It has been a really moving experience being able to represent my country as a contemporary Canadian craft artist at one of Australia's leading arts and culture institutions.

The exhibition opened to the public on July 30th 2011, staging a ground-breaking exhibition of never before seen lace works by artists and designers from around the world. 130 lace works by 134 artists from 20 countries around the world will be featured in love lace which is open until April 2012.

The definition of lace in the exhibition includes 'an open network structure in which the pattern of negative spaces is as important as the solid areas.'
For my application I was interested in expanding upon my Anitquated Notions series to include a set of four new burn-out studies...

Here is a sneak peek at some of my work in the show:

Here are some highlights from my favorite artists in the exhibition:

I have been long interested by the work of artist Shane Waltener and was soooooo excited to finally see his work in person, as well as take part in his interactive installation. Here is an excerpt from his artist statement:

Another World Wide Web (2011) consists of a series of modular web-like structures knitted in shirring elastic using a traditional Shetland lace technique. I am interested in how the work is moulded and shaped by the nature of the space and architecture where it is installed.

Installation: Shetland lace knitting using shirring elastic

Another artist involved in the exhibition whose work I have been interested in for a long time is fellow Canadian Meghan Price, from Montreal.

Meghan had her work fabricated for her in Sydney where it was overseen by curator Lindie Ward, Lindie described the experience of watching the process of water jet cutting to make steel lace during the lecture: Not Just a Thread. Here is an image of her work:

water-jet cut powder-coated steel

Joep and Jeroen Verhoven of Demakersvan opened the same symposium, delivering a thought provoking lecture into the work that they make and their steel bobbin Lace Fence ...which is such a sought after product that it has its own seperate company and website!

Metal lace fence (3 panels): bobbin lace technique using galvanised steel wire; fabricated in Bangalore, India

Mesne and supermanoeuvre:

Pricking proposes a custom-made digital construction kit for lace-making, which diffuses the conventional roles of designer and consumer. This will take the form of an interactive interface that allows users to playfully craft and explore the algorithmic procedures of lace-making.

This was a really incredible piece! There were also a number of laser-cut paper patterns as a record of the lace forms being manipulated.

Some other works I liked include: Tomy Ka Chun Leung, Kim Lieberman, Michaela Bruton and Lenka Suchanek.

Unfortunately Janet Echelman's Tsunami would not be installed for the opening of the exhibition so I didn't get a chance to see it. If you are in the Sydney area over the course of the next year, it should be installed and up now, so please go check it out on my behalf!