Art & Craft

Over the last 400 years, thinking about Craft and the Decorative Arts has been determined by hierarchical distinctions reflecting tensions between artistocratic and industrial factions of Western society. Only by the eighteenth-century were painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry sifted out from crafts, but then the Arts and Crafts and, later, the Bauhaus Movements used non-Western artifacts to liberate craft from derogatory comparisons both with ‘High’ art and the soulless manufactures of the industrialised West. 

Today, craft inspired by indigenous societies has threaded itself into the international art world, conveying different meanings across class, gender and geography. Leanne Bray’s craft-art on show at Tresillian during the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial partakes of this eclectic complexity. After a short introduction, the lecturer is joined by the artist on a walking tour of the exhibition to explore how African and Indian culture contributes to her work.

Richard Read is Emeritus Professor and Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the…