Crafting Change: Practicing Activism in Contemporary Australia

Authors

  • Tal Fitzpatrick Victorian College of the Arts Melbourne University
  • Katve-Kaisa Kontturi The Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University

Keywords:

activism, craft, craftivism, political moments, processes and spaces of making, new materialisms, relational philosophies

Abstract

This article brings together thoughts and practices of two Melbourne-based women working across the fields of craftivism, practice-led research and contemporary art history. While introducing and analysing Australian craft(ivist) projects, this article also suggests new concepts useful in tackling the contemporary phenomenon of craft activism.

Author Biographies

Tal Fitzpatrick, Victorian College of the Arts Melbourne University

Tal Fitzpatrick is a Melbourne-based textile artist, craftivist, and community development worker who is currently completing a PhD with the Centre for Cultural Partnerships at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Having taken up her paternal grandmothers’ figurative approach to appliqué quilting Tal’s practice led-research explores the intersections between socially engaged art, activism and feminist and new materialist approaches to craft. For more information on Tal’s latest projects, please visit: www.praxialpractice.wordpress.com


Katve-Kaisa Kontturi, The Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University

Katve-Kaisa Kontturi works as a postdoctoral fellow in the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne. She is a founding member of the European New Materialist Network, and has devoted her academic career to the study of relational materialities of art and the body. Kaisa enjoys curating affective exhibitions, the bodily rhythm of crafting, and dressing in beautifully patterned vintage frocks.


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Published

2015-10-15

Issue

No. 14 (2015): Craft Rhetorics

Section

Issue #14: Craft Rhetoric

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