Between Art and Craft

19 September – 5 October

Ana María Beaulieu, Helena Burman, Sara Casten Carlberg, Ingela Friedner, Christina Göthesson, Kjell Hansson, Carolina Hindsjö, Susanne Högdahl Holm, Eva Larsson, Gunilla Leander, Monika Masser, Elisabeth Otterbring, Lena Rammi, Ekaterina Sisfontes, Maria Zetterstrand

In connection with Stockholm Craft Week https://stockholmcraftweek.se/en/, Studio 44 has initiated the exhibition Between Art and Craft. The exhibition is a collaboration between artists and craftspeople, exploring the borderland between art and craft and placing it in a contemporary context. Inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, the exhibition aims to highlight how changes in today's society affect and shift craft-based practices in relation to contemporary art's more conceptual orientation.

The Arts and Crafts movement was an artistic style and social movement in Britain, initially inspired by the writings of John Ruskin, and it had its greatest significance between 1880 and 1910. The Arts and Crafts movement was a response to the Industrial Revolution. As a reaction to the soulless, mass-produced objects of the Industrial Revolution, the Arts and Crafts movement advocated decoration and beauty, the creation of useful and beautiful objects.

In today's society, changes consist of AI taking over more and more of artistic work, environmental warnings about growing mountains of goods and harmful manufacturing processes, as well as the unsustainable handling of discarded objects. In pre-industrial society, the long time it took to produce a single item was a challenge. In today's post-industrial society, far too many goods are mass-produced in far too short a time. At the same time, new studies show that manual work plays a crucial role in the development of the brain. This means that the ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement have once again become relevant.