Between Art And Industry 

Molloy & Sons

Between Art And Industry is a new exhibition of work commissioned in partnership with the National Craft Gallery, Kilkenny and curated by Ann Mulrooney. The exhibition 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 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 features work by UK maker Neil Brownsword, whose work focuses on the decline of the potteries of Stoke-on-Trent while Irish glass artist Roisin de Buitlear's work will be considering Waterford Glass. Donegal based weavers Molloy and Sons provide a counterpoint with an insight into successful, contemporary, commercial craft making.

Ann Mulrooney of the National Craft Gallery, says of the exhibition (quoted from National Craft Gallery website):
“The title of this exhibition expresses the relationship of craft to industry. Craft is an intelligence of the hand that creates the bridge between initial inspiration and finished product. It is a specific, skillful, engaged and physical understanding of materials and process, problem-solving by its nature. Shifting values suggest that the evolution of manufacturing now is towards a closer relationship with craft and the handmade. In that sense, this exhibition could be seen as an arc, responding to the legacies of history but also describing a present in which new manifestations of small-scale production can be seen to emerge and survive”

This exhibition is part of August's 'Craft Month'. A publication is available with an essay by Finbarr Bradley (UCD).
http://www.millenniumcourt.org