Here, There and Everywhere (We are a Community of Cells) Elspeth Fougere

Elspeth Fougere's Here, There and Everywhere (We are a Community of Cells) begins with a mass of woollen crochet spirals that evoke a collection of cells. The handmade forms are taken out into the landscape, placed onto bodies and into environments in performances emphasising spontaneity and physical play. These encounters are documented, producing sounds and still and moving images, which form a history of trace encounters with the objects and act as a basis for ongoing interactions during the exhibition.

Every Saturday from 12 - 3 pm Fougere and collaborators will run workshop sessions inviting participants to help her grow the colony of woollen cells, which will, through gifting and exchange, spread the installation out from the gallery and into Dunedin. Her strategy of gathering people together for the exchange of objects, skills, resources and stories in the gallery space, captures core philosophy of the contemporary craft resurgence. 

Click to download the exhibition text (PDF)

Presented alongside Aroha Novak & Elise O'Neill Expensive Rubbish. Using handmade and recycling methods O'Neill, Novak and Fougere are part of an international resurgence of a craft and do-it-yourself ethos, which has grown in response to current economic and environmental conditions.

Blue Oyster Discussion Session 7: Tuesday 15 December, 5:30pm

For this discussion we will begin with a screening of Handmade Nation which documents the resurgence of craft and DIY in America. What kind of alternatives and challenges to the art market can come from the resurgence of craft, the handmade and responsible, local creation?

Exploring this question and issues arising from the film will be:

Stella Lange, Senior Lecturer in Fasion at Otago Polytechnic
Christine Keller, Academic Leader in Textiles at Otago Polytechnic