UNMADE is a curated exhibition of forty works from thirty-five artists that examines “unmaking as a creative act”.
As part of this self-reflexive journey that considers what it means to consume, make and curate in a moment of deep ecological crisis, I conceptualized UNMADE, an exhibition ‘hailing’[i] artists to move outside of colonial capitalist systems that encourage mass production and therefore the mass destruction of environments that sustain us.
Pushing the idea that ecology is “predicated on the principle that every creature is connected to every element that composes the environment, so that all living things depend on the balance of a complex system of growth and decay,”[ii] UNMADE invited artists to examine “unmaking as a creative act” and deliberate on how all art and design, by virtue of their material nature and processes, is Earth Art or Land Art as it is from the environment we acquire materials and it is to our landscapes work eventually returns.
Also cyclical is this way of making. Working on a “RE-Craftivism Manifesto as part of my PhD research, “unmaking” echos concepts, beliefs and practices found within past art movements such as Dadism, Fluxus, Relational Aesthetics and Craftivism in order to arrive at sustainable modes of making and presentation.
[i] (Louis Althusser, Mapping Ideology: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 1994)
[ii] BOETZKES, AMANDA. The Ethics of Earth Art. NED - New edition ed., University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
Unmade Curatorial Essay by Jill Price
As part of this self-reflexive journey that considers what it means to consume, make and curate in a moment of deep ecological crisis, I conceptualized UNMADE, an exhibition ‘hailing’[i] artists to move outside of colonial capitalist systems that encourage mass production and therefore the mass destruction of environments that sustain us.
Pushing the idea that ecology is “predicated on the principle that every creature is connected to every element that composes the environment, so that all living things depend on the balance of a complex system of growth and decay,”[ii] UNMADE invited artists to examine “unmaking as a creative act” and deliberate on how all art and design, by virtue of their material nature and processes, is Earth Art or Land Art as it is from the environment we acquire materials and it is to our landscapes work eventually returns.
Also cyclical is this way of making. Working on a “RE-Craftivism Manifesto as part of my PhD research, “unmaking” echos concepts, beliefs and practices found within past art movements such as Dadism, Fluxus, Relational Aesthetics and Craftivism in order to arrive at sustainable modes of making and presentation.
[i] (Louis Althusser, Mapping Ideology: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 1994)
[ii] BOETZKES, AMANDA. The Ethics of Earth Art. NED - New edition ed., University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
Unmade Curatorial Essay by Jill Price
