Craft

12 September to 01 October 2001. Free entry.

Craft was a one-night fashion and arts event, showcasing the summer collections of High Street shops Tango and Novak, and presenting the work of three Christchurch video artists whose work explored connections and crossovers between fashion, art, design, and contemporary culture. These commissioned projects showcased the work of contemporary and experimental local artists, whose video, projected large scale across three walls, played at intervals throughout the night, in between catwalk displays of the summer collections of Tango and Novak.

For the two weeks following Craft, the three video works were placed in the windows of both Novak and Tango, as well as fellow High Street business, Galaxy Records. This placement was highly visible, and continued the discussion between art, commerce and fashion that the works had generated at the Craft event.

TRUE CONFESSIONS
WAROONWAN THONGVANIT

Waroonwan Thongvanit is a Thai artist currently based in Christchurch, infused with the confessional ethos of reality TV shows such as Big Brother and Survivor, her video installations straddle a seamless line between truth and fabrication.

True Confessions featured the artist in a variety of mock confessional video works, her image in close-up. Studied, yet perfectly frank, in one video the artist pours out her innermost thoughts on a breakup, in another the camera watches small children playing in a pool - yet we are simultaneously always aware of the precise framing of the camera and the seductive nature of the images presented.

HANNAH BEEHRE AND AARON BEEHRE

Artist Hannah Beehre and designer Aaron Beehre have worked together on a number of projects, including playing in the group Pine, and exhibiting paintings and sculptures at the City Gallery, Wellington, and the Govett Brewster Gallery, New Plymouth. Playful yet elegant, their artistic practice plays on the connections between art and commerce, fashion and design,

Sourcing images directly from contemporary design and fashion - logos, posters, cute Manga style creatures - their work appears light, fresh and ephemeral, designed to date quickly, as market driven and prone to temporal readings as the street art it apes.

Poignant and seductive, featured a slow moving camera panning across images of a trendy New York cityscape, contrasted with scenes from a run down carpark in Croatia. As the camera scans closer to its subjects, one begins to realize that every image has been infiltrated with the artists distinctive logos and typeface, inserted into slogans and graffiti admidst billboards and walls. Placed in the front window of Galaxy Records, in lower High Street, this work aped the sleek look of a music video at first glance.

OP SHOP AND JAYNE JOYCE

Artist Rudolf Boelee and fashion designer Robyn Voyce work together under the label Op Shop, a project which consists as both a label, and a temporary shop/gallery held regularly at their home. Fusing a love for retro fashion and design with a concern for critically charged social commentary, Op Shop defy the saying ‘less is more’, merging old and new, high art and low art into a diverse blend of media, from clothing to installation to video.

Working with local designer Jayne Joyce, this work gave a quirky, humorous look at their life and art practices, showing the artists at home in their studio environment, even their dog got a look in! Endearing, intriguing, and engaging, this fly on the wall glimpse of an artist’s life showed a blurring between life and art, home and work, production and concept.