In the final episode of season 1 of The Decorating Dissidence Podcast, Suzanna Petot talks to weaver and maker Sara Kelly. Decorating Dissidence has been working with Sara since the exhibition Weave It! 100 Years of the Women's Weaving Workshops in 2019. Their conversation ranges from transitioning from architecture to textiles, the impact of Sara's trip to Central America, Anni Albers and the Bauhaus, to her most recent project which combines the urban environment, woven textile processes and social interaction.

"It's interesting in terms of craft, I think we definitely learn through experience and we think through making, so you deepen your subject knowledge through your relationship with tools and the materials that you use, as well as the environment that you're in."

Bio:

Sara Kelly (@studiosarakelly) is a designer and weaver from the North-East of England.  Her design history to date combines her passions for textiles and architecture. She has achieved a postgraduate degree in Textile Design from Chelsea College of Art and an undergraduate degree in Architecture from Newcastle University.

Her knowledge and understanding of the built environment mixed with her passion for conservation and traditional crafts has altered her path towards a career where textiles and sustainability are at the forefront.  She now works as a weaver from her studio in South-East London working on private and personal commissions based on a foundation of narrative and contemporary design.

She strives to bring together elements of the built environment and textiles and believes the combined aspects of architecture include everything from the building itself to the art which lives within. Sara strives towards a more sustainable future within textiles, and is conscious in her designs to maintain this ethos. Each project showcases a refined relationship between materials, narrative and space, which has a personal, durable and beautiful place within its surroundings.

The full transcript for the episode can be accessed here.

Follow us on Instagram @decoratingdissidence and Twitter @decodissidence for new episodes and updates on other projects.

For more information about the project, visit decoratingdissidence.com

For the fifth episode of The Decorating Dissidence Podcast, Hailey Maxwell, an Art Historian and writer from Glasgow, interviews photographers Gemma Dagger and Ellen Rogers about their respective practices and approaches to the medium. As Maxwell describes in her opening, both Gemma and Ellen are inheritors of a surrealist tradition, they conjure strange and unsettling worlds. Both artists have a sensibility, which is open to absurdity, humour, and social critique, yet distinctive approaches to how they depict their subjects - from the cameras they use, the settings they capture, to the materiality of the image itself.

Bio:

Hailey Maxwell is a Scottish writer and researcher specialising in myth, violence and desire in 20th century avant-garde art and literature. She is broadly interested in how power operates across political and cultural space. She works in various ways to enable individuals and communities to self-advocate and discover new ways of thinking and seeing.

Gemma Dagger is a photographer, curator and chef from Dumfries, Scotland. She studied MA Film and Moving Image Production at the Northern Film School (Leeds) and BA Photography at the University of the West of Scotland. Her work explores how the ‘intangible’ is made visible, looking at ritual from alternative perspectives to unearth unfamiliar narratives. Through a blurry combination of staged and ‘real’ imaginings, her photography reflects an ongoing fascination with the sacred places and occult practices connecting people and landscape. Her project ‘Maryhill Peoples Group’ explored collective consciousness and the human need for belief systems. It was exhibited at Street Level Photoworks and was published in the British Journal of Photography. In 2016 was she was awarded a commission by Fòcas and the British Arts Council, connecting 6 artists in Scotland and India. The resulting series ‘A Thin Place’ was exhibited in Glasgow, Lewis and Gandhinagar. She currently lives in Glasgow and is researching a project on the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in Scottish island communities.

Ellen Rogers creates all-analogue, emotional and accessible photography that is both careful and skilled, the work is hand-printed and often hand-painted. Ellen is most notedly a fashion photographer whose clients include Vogue, Vice, Tank, i-D, Alice Temperley and many more. Ellen has also created photoshoots for institutions such as the British Journal of Photography, the Ashmolean Museum and The Smithsonian. Her time is separated between making personal work, commercial work and lecturing on fashion photography at the Arts University Bournemouth. Ellen graduated from Goldsmiths College in 2007 and she is currently studying for her PhD at Central Saint Martins in London. Her practical and theoretical research revolves around melancholy in fashion photography.

You can listen to The Decorating Dissidence Podcast on Spotify, Anchor, Apple and Google Podcasts.

The full transcript for the episode can be accessed here.

Follow us on Instagram @decoratingdissidence and Twitter @decodissidence for new episodes and updates on other projects.

For more information about the project, visit decoratingdissidence.com

In this episode of The Decorating Dissidence Podcast, Jade French speaks with Nastasia Alberti, an artist and an assistant archive curator at Tate. Their conversation centres on Alberti's work on the Vanessa Bell archive, her perspective on photography, archives and making. From discussing Vanessa Bell's life as revealed through her archive of photographs and letters, the atmosphere at Charleston - the home of the Bloomsbury Group in Sussex, to contemporary practices of decorating one's home, the episode offers another perspective in the dialogue around arts and crafts and insight into the inner workings of some of the most famous figures of British modernism. 

"She [Vanessa Bell] sees herself as an artist. And she's seen by others as an artist. Because of that, no matter what she does, it's regarded as art. And it goes back to this whole idea of what makes a piece art? Is it because you decided that you are an artist? Or because people see you as that."

Make sure to listen to the full episode and share your thoughts!

Bio:

Nastasia Alberti is an artist and an assistant archive curator. As an artist she has exhibited her work alongside the likes of Gillian Wearing and Juergen Teller. As an archivist and curator she has worked with prominent women's collections including Vanessa Bell’s photographs, Barbara Hepworth’s archive and has also programmed public events.

Links:

#MYNAMEIS – Gillian Wearing public exhibition 

Free The Night – public exhibition

You can listen to The Decorating Dissidence Podcast on Spotify, Anchor, Apple and Google Podcasts.

The full transcript for the episode can be accessed here.

Follow us on Instagram @decoratingdissidence and Twitter @decodissidence for new episodes and updates on other projects.

For more information about the project, visit decoratingdissidence.com

In the latest episode of The Decorating Dissidence Podcast, Ghanaian-British curator, writer, and educator Yaa Addae of Decolonize the Art World interviews Akua Kwakwa, co-host of the podcast Off the Rack produced by brainwash media. Their conversation centres around luxury, particularly how contemporary African labels are re-defining what luxury means, and fashion as a medium for creating new worlds. Yaa and Akua discuss the importance of fashion and clothes, comparing their experiences of living in the U.S/UK to Ghana, first memories of dressing themselves, brands you should pay attention to, and how diversity in fashion can give more agency, access and glamour to those who fashion has previously excluded.

"The way fashion will help us to create new worlds is by helping us to create communities...I think people will start looking more at brands that they feel like cater to their communities and within their communities." - Akua Kwakwa

Bio:

Akua Kwakwa is a creative in the fashion industry, working and living in New York City.

She grew up between Ghana, South Africa, Jamaica and the USA and now calls Accra home. Her favourite colour is purple (though she is unsure what that really means) and if she could, she would get paid to read books for a living.

She has always been enamoured of fashion and did her Bachelor's degree in Fashion Management, with a concentration in Communications. She co-hosts a podcast with a friend of hers about fashion, and pop culture, and will talk about anything fashion-related given the opportunity.

Yaa Addae is a Ghanaian-British curator, writer, and teaching artist. The emancipatory potential of play is central to their practice, as is dreamwork. Currently based between London and Accra, Yaa is a culture staff writer at AMAKA and manages a digital studio, A-kra, which offers an online art history platform (Decolonize The Art World) and virtual residency program (The Imaginarium). They have spoken at Southbank Centre,Nubuke Foundation, The Barbican and lead workshops with Autograph ABP, The Church of Black Feminist Thought, The Library of Africa and The African Diaspora and Rumpus Room.

What to learn more?

Listen to or watch the Off the Rack episode 'What is "African Luxury"  Fashion'?

Follow Brainwash Media Website

Bibliography

Using are.na (Open Source so people can continue to add on bc we still have a lot of questions+research ongoing): click here

You can listen to The Decorating Dissidence Podcast on Spotify, Anchor, Apple and Google Podcasts.

The full transcript for the episode can be accessed here.

Follow us on Instagram @decoratingdissidence and Twitter @decodissidence for new episodes and updates on other projects.

For more information about the project, visit decoratingdissidence.com

In the second episode of The Decorating Dissidence Podcast, Suzanna Petot speaks with Beth Hughes, Curator at the Arts Council Collection based at Southbank Centre. Originally recorded in May 2020, this conversation centres around Hughes' entry into the art world, her experiences curating craft, debates about the craft object in contemporary art, the importance of access and working with a public collection, as well as how she herself was making during lockdown as a means of support for the community, healing and joy. 

"The way I see sewing now is almost similar to how I see what I do when I'm trying to think about our collection and the fact that I'm trying to work my way through things, work out the context of different decisions that I might make or how these things come together and be very conscious of those decisions."

Make sure to listen to the full episode and share your thoughts!

Bio:

Beth Hughes is Curator at the Arts Council Collection based at Southbank Centre. Beth’s curatorial practice is centred on the principle that everyone has the right to enjoy and participate in art. She balances the fundamental belief in the importance and power of collections with a dedicated commitment to collaboration, access, equality and diversity. Since joining the Arts Council Collection Beth has curated the touring exhibition, Criminal Ornamentation: Yinka Shonibare MBE curates the Arts Council Collection as well as Grayson Perry: The Vanity of Small Differences, alongside advising on a number of exhibitions across the country as part of the exhibition loan programme. Prior to this Beth was Curator at Lakeland Arts over two venues, Abbot Hall Art Gallery and Blackwell, The Arts and Crafts House, where she curated Barbara Hepworth: Within the Landscape, Patrick Caulfield and Emilie Taylor and Bodil Manz.

You can listen to The Decorating Dissidence Podcast on Spotify, Anchor, Apple and Google Podcasts.

The full transcript for the episode can be accessed here.

Follow us on Instagram @decoratingdissidence and Twitter @decodissidence for new episodes and updates on other projects.

For more information about the project, visit decoratingdissidence.com

In this episode of The Decorating Dissidence Podcast, Dr Lottie Whalen speaks with British Ghanaian artist Enam Gbewonyo about the transitions in her life along her ongoing journey to finding her sense of self that have led her from textile design, to fashion, to becoming an artist and discovering performance as a new way for audiences to engage with her work. This inspiring and insightful conversation around Gbewonyo's artistic practice, her passion for making, founding the Black British Female Artists Collective, the power of representation alongside spaces of healing and care, and her hopes for the future after a tumultuous year is certainly one not to miss.

Bio:

Enam Gbewonyo (b.1980, London) studied BA European Textile Design at Bradford School of Art and Design. She then embarked on a six year career in knitwear design in New York but following redundancy, returned to the UK where her life as an artist began.

Gbewonyo’s practice investigates identity, womanhood, and humanity through the mediums of textiles and performance. She also promotes the healing benefits of handcraft, using processes like embroidery, knit, weave, print and wirework.

Gbewonyo has exhibited with galleries and institutions such as; Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine MECA, Saatchi Gallery, Carl Freedman Gallery, Tafeta Gallery, Bonhams, Gallery 46 Whitechapel, New Ashgate Gallery, Sulger-Buel Lovell Gallery and Artist Project Contemporary Art Fair, Toronto. She has delivered performances for Two Temple Place, Christie’s, Henry Moore Institute, at the 58th edition of Venice Biennale’s opening week, as part of the 2020 public programme for 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Marrakech and most recently a livestream performance activating Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s exhibition, Fly in League with the Night for Tate Britain. Her collaborative commissioned artwork exploring empire, slavery, colonisation and the tea trade is currently on view at Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Passionate about elevating black women artists, Gbewonyo is also a curator as well as the founder of the Black British Female Artist (BBFA) Collective. The Collective serves as a platform to support emerging black women artists build sustainable careers whilst working to advocate for more inclusivity in the British arts landscape. Gbewonyo is also a writer and public speaker. She has delivered talks with the likes of St. Andrews University (2021), British High Commission Nigeria (2019), Goldsmiths University (2019), Leeds University (2018), adidas USA (2018), Oxford University (2018), UAL London College ofFashion (2017/18) and Kuenyehia Art Prize, Ghana (2017). Her thought pieces can be found in international art publication, ‘Something We Africans Got’.

www.enamgdesigns.com

You can listen to The Decorating Dissidence Podcast on Spotify, Anchor and Google Podcasts.

The full transcript for the episode can be accessed here.

Make sure to follow us on Instagram @decoratingdissidence and Twitter @decodissidence for new episodes and updates on other projects.

For more information about the project, visit decoratingdissidence.com

*This conversation was recording 22 October, 2020

Welcome to The Decorating Dissidence Podcast! 

This season has been a labour of love over the past year for Decorating Dissidence, an interdisciplinary project exploring the political, aesthetic & conceptual qualities of craft from modernism to the contemporary. Outside of the project's online journal and exhibitions, we wanted to create a space where we could share stories and invite conversations about crafts directly from practitioners themselves. Across six episodes, the team behind the project and invited hosts speak with artists, curators, writers and academics to discuss a variety of topics across craft - from exploring weaving and the Bauhaus legacy, to investigating fashion as a medium for world-building for contemporary African labels.  This introductory episode covers the origin and aims of Decorating Dissidence, why we wanted to make a podcast series and what to expect from the episodes to come.

You can listen to The Decorating Dissidence Podcast on Spotify and Anchor.

The full transcript for the episode can be accessed here.

Make sure to follow us on Instagram @decoratingdissidence and Twitter @decodissidence for new episodes and updates on other projects.

For more information about the project, visit decoratingdissidence.com