BETWEEN ART AND INDUSTRY now at Millennium Court Arts centre Portadown August 4th – September 25th 2012
William St Portadown Co Armagh BT623NX
Between Art and Industry offers an opportunity to explore the shifting relationships between craft and industry through the use of objects, imagery 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. It looks to examine the shifting values that suggest the evolution of manufacturing now is towards a closer relationship with craft and the handmade. The exhibition features three different viewpoints from Róisín de Buitléar glass artist, Neil Brownsword ceramist, and Molloy and sons, weavers.
Craft Master: Tuesday 6th September 7pm RTE one. Big Mountain Productions.
Programme one; HOT GLASS
Filmed on location at The Irish Handmade Glass Company, Kite Design studios, Henrietta st Waterford.
In the first programme of a new series ‘Craft Master’ three apprentices mentored by Róisín de Buitléar, are coming to terms with designing, blowing and producing exhibition standard pieces in one week. Filmed on location in the glass studios of the Irish handmade Glass Company, Henrietta st, Waterford. Craft Master takes three apprentices, Anne Marie Hayes, Aoife Soden and Sinéad Brennan, through a gruelling week of design and production in the hot glass workshop. For one of them it is their first experience of handling hot glass.
The apprentices faced many challenges in the short time allowed to produce prototypes and finished pieces suitable for exhibition. The apprentices worked with molten glass to produce their specific design under the watchful eye of their mentor, hundreds of visiting tourists and expert craftsmen.
Glass blowing and hot glass sculpting are difficult and challenging skills to master. In the past Ireland was a world leader in the production of handblown glass. Learning to expertly manipulate liquid glass at temperatures of 1100 degrees centigrade, takes many hundreds of hours of practise, great stamina and intense concentration on coordinating movement of the body and material. In glass factory training it takes at least 7 years, to become a master blower.
Developing innovative design ideas in glass while dealing with intense heat, physical demands and the vulnerability of the material, are only some of the challenges the apprentices faced during the making of this programme.
Airing on RTE one at 7pm on Tuesday 6th September 2011 watch how this beautiful material is manipulated and coaxed into three very different solutions by three very lively and talented women.
