Historical Futures

About

Historical Futures brings together 4 artists who employ time consuming processes of making to explore ways which traditional media can be relevant in the contemporary world.  Using techniques such as embroidery, lost wax bronze casting and ceramics, they examine how these ways of working can fit into artists’ practice today.  The care and time taken in making these objects becomes part spectacle and part methodology for thinking and problem solving.  These works seek to address both the historical weight the materials themselves have as art objects and how permanency and labour effect our interactions with the objects themselves.

The artists all feel that craftsmanship and making is intrinsic to their practices.  Blair Cahill uses intricate embroidered panels and machined steel structures to create imagery that references poetic narrative. Cheryl Papasian meticulously creates geodes and ores out of bronze and ceramic to examine ideas of value in conjunction with the mass-produced everyday object.  Necole Schmitz uses hand building methods and traditional knotting techniques to make sculptural ceramic vessels and primitive weapons.  Alex J Wood’s work juxtaposes ephemeral paper models and bronze sculptures creating eccentric narratives.

In conjunction with MOCA London

For more information: www.hfutures.wordpress.com