Dissected porcelain

I really like this concept by UK sculptural artist Beccy Ridsdel. Called Art/Craft, she wanted to explore the debate of craft versus art, technique and function versus idea and meaning.

Installed like a surgical lab experiment, the outwardly ordinary pieces of bone china plates and mugs have been dissected to reveal beautifully ornate innards.

Beccy explains that the '... ‘surgeon’ is dissecting the craft object to see what is within' and that '..he finds craft through and through. He tries the experiment again and again, piling up the dissected work, hoping to see something different but it is always the same'.

Her thought was that by '...turning a table full of craft objects into an artwork in its own right, it had a point beyond the technique, beyond the things themselves'.

 

I'd argue though that the dissected pieces themselves also suggest how, at its core, craft has art running through it. Beautiful craft work is, in its own right, an artform. Take any piece of tapestry, hand embroidered wedding gown, hand forged sword...