The V&A exhibition, Power of Making, is a joint venture with the Crafts Council. This is the second major collaboration between the two organisations, the first being ″Out of the Ordinary - Spectacular Craft″, held in 2007. The exhibition features an extraordinary range of objects from a number of industries, ranging from film, fashion, interiors and design, to medical innovations, such as artificial eyes and glass prosthetic limbs.
To accompany the exhibition V&A Publishing and the Crafts Council have published ″Power of Making - The Importance of Being Skilled″, edited by Daniel Charny, an independent curator/educator, and curator of the exhibition.
In his introductory essay Charny says: ″Almost all of us can make. It is one of the strongest of human impulses and one of the most significant means of human expression″ (Power of Making, p. 7). This statement is the raison d'être for the exhibition and its supporting publication.
Power of Making – Layout of the Publication
The publication opens with a Foreword by the Directors of the V&A and Crafts Council, plus an introductory essay by Daniel Charny entitled Thinking of Making.
Featuring scholarly, but non-technical, essays by international authors, Daniel Miller; Professor Sir Christopher Frayling; Martina Margetts; Ele Carpenter; and Bruce Sterling, the book looks at our attitudes to skills, addressing questions such as:
- Are we skilled enough? Who has the skills? How are new materials being used?
- What does the future hold for making? Will we see a second industrial revolution?
- The most important question is, perhaps, what can skilled crafts people offer the arts and creative industries?
Also included is The Making Revolution, a conversation between Daniel Charny and Professor Neil Gershenfeld, Fab Labs founder. Fab Labs, or fabrication laboratories, are fully kitted workshops that allow almost anyone, from young children to skilled craftsmen, to make almost anything.
The book concludes with a glossary of techniques and processes, thus making its contents accessible to all readers, whether they be merely curious, or experienced designers and crafters.
Power of Making – a Different Type of Exhibition Catalogue
Power of Making: the importance of being skilled does not record every single item in the exhibition. Neither does it present every item with a detailed description or provenance. Instead, it presents a well-chosen selection of items from the display, demonstrating how making is an expression of the most powerful human instinct, and how making things empowers those who do the making. Each item is accompanied by a short caption poem written by novelist Patricia Rodriquez, who suggests inventive, sometimes fictional, readings of the objects.
The catalogue is presented on good quality paper, in a larger than average font, and accompanied by 70 colour illustrations. The 80-page paperback publication is available from the V&A Museum, priced at £9.99, ISBN: 978-185177653.
Power of Making, a free exhibition, is on display at the V&A Museum until 2nd January 2011.
Sources:
- Charny, D., Power of Making: the importance of being skilled, V&A Publishing/Crafts Council, 2011
- V&A Museum (accessed 5/9/2011)
Frances Spiegel - Frances Spiegel, B.A. Hons. (Open)., Dip.Eur.Hum., read Art History/European Modern History at the Open University.
