BUSHCRAFTERS: Making / Make Do

About

When exactly did we start destroying the world?

Throughout time, makers have garnered specialised, even niche skill sets in order to problem solve and carry out their creative desires. Beyond certain fundamentals within any given craft or trade, these cultivated dexterities become individualised, only making sense or being useful to that person’s particular needs. In the world of art and object making, the components utilised in form-giving may seem arbitrary, superfluous, or even silly to the eye of the observer. Is everything at our disposal nowadays? This thought is compounded by the image economy, the erosion of natural materials, and the contemporary forever surplus of waste and destruction. In truth and even so, an object’s “necessity”- its right to exist - will forever be validated by the fact that it simply already does.

Borrowing the term from hobbyist survivalism, Bushcrafters celebrates the frenzied sets of hands interested in taking whatever it is around them and turning it into something singular (useful or otherwise) through discernible, sincere, and straightforward actions. Just as those who take minimal supplies into the wilderness and forge what it is they need to get through their self-inflicted exile from modern society, this group of makers (six “local” from the UK and seven international) has been gathered for their shared impulse to cope with the world as it is today through seemingly ad-hoc yet deliberate production: each slice, stack, layer or remix to create something inherently familiar but always new, maybe even needed beyond the shadow of contemporary dread. The dividing line between their materials and forms of choice are split by the anthropocenic concept of locality - or what’s near; versus universality, what’s everywhere - raising questions around who has access to what, and whether creating is about living or merely about surviving.

The Second Act, 29 Sunbury Workshops, Swanfield St, London, E2 7LF