The Art Workers’ Guild
The Art Workers’ Guild
Owen Jones
Sarah P Corbett is the Founder of the global Craftivist Collective and an award-wining activist. Passionate about offering tools to deliver slow, quiet, kind, and attractive activism using handicrafts (mostly hand embroidery and paper crafts) as a tool to serve social justice. Sarah focuses on engaging apolitical and anxious people who have never taken part in activism before. Her TED talk ‘Activism needs Introverts’ was chosen as TED Talk of the Day and her work is currently exhibited in the Design Museum Denmark.
Sarah will discuss the power of handicrafts as a tool for critical thinking about the complexities of social change and how her unique ‘gentle protest’ methodology for craftivism (craft + activism) has led to changes in hearts, minds, policies, and laws around the world in a creative, respectful, and non-polarising way.
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Conrad will give a talk on the work of sculptors in the British motion picture industry. Heavily illustrated with work from various productions, in his talk he will discuss the different materials and techniques used, especially the use of polystyrene, in the manufacture of large-scale sculptures and landscapes for film sets.
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Upholsterer Mick Sheridan and weaver Eleanor Pritchard chew the fat over The Hayshovel Chair. The latest addition in a series of Mick’s ‘Guerilla Upholstery’ re-imaginings of abandoned furniture pieces, the Hayshovel chair takes an esoteric ‘on-the-hoof’ approach to re-design. Informed by Eleanor’s suggested visual reference points - vernacular wooden shovels, hay-carts and beaten copper pub tables – Mick has re-worked the abandoned chair as an eccentric, irreverent piece of ‘outsider’ furniture. Re-constructed with studio off-cuts and found timber, the work explores questions of value and re-use in our throw-away culture and the importance of play-time in professional practice.
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This talk focuses on the ideas and practice of architect and designer Owen Jones (1812-1874). Best known as the author of The Grammar of Ornament (1856), which has never been out of print, Jones had strong opinions about the role of art and architecture in public life. This extensively illustrated talk will explore some of his ideas, including the creation of original ornament and mass art education. Drawing on research for Olivia’s recently published book Owen Jones and the V&A: Ornament for a Modern Age (Lund Humphries, 2023), the talk considers Jones’s ideas about the craft of design and his readiness to embrace industrial materials. 2024 will be the 150th anniversary of Jones’s death, offering an ideal moment to reflect on his theoretical and practical ideas as well as his legacy for contemporary makers.
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