The significance and emergence of ‘craft’ in contemporary fine art exhibitions and practice, exemplified within the Venice Biennale 2024.

Abstract

I never even knew that art could be anything other than spectacular pre-Raphaelite paintings, or imposing renaissance sculptures; the skill, technique and overall grandiose filled me with awe, and quickly became my expectation and standard. Of course, what I didn’t realise was that this slither of the art world that I was exposed to, was simply that - a limited preview into the canon. It was when I had entered university and begun knitting and sewing within the context of visual art that I discovered this history of denial and exclusion for artists like me.

Craft has a complex history which has left it often overlooked within the art world, but today we may again be at a point of revival. Mirroring the 1970s, Glenn Adamson (2007, p.166) highlights a certain trendiness of craft within the contemporary art sphere: ‘craft seems positively fashionable in the present moment, as artists, architects and designers evince a fascination with process and materials’. It is important to define what craft is, to delineate what we will be referring to throughout this essay. I will discuss the changing value of the medium, which has gone through many historical variations, so I think it is important to classify craft here as its material manifestations. Tate defines craft as 'a form of making which generally produces an object that has a function’ (Tate, no date), but I believe this discounts a lot of contemporary work, focussing on the physical results. Instead, I prefer Glenn Adamson’s (no date) definition of modern craft - ‘the application of skilled making to the world around us.’ - which instead focuses more on the means of production and less so on the functionality of product.