craft is dead: long live craft
The bowl both holds and offers up. The bowl in animated suspension makes that offering more elusive. If a vessel is a unconscious container of secrets, then the secrets of virtual vessels may never be unlocked but paradoxically, in a moment, may also be universally transmitted.
Hobart has been my home for the past year and is a great distance from the familiarity of the far north coast of NSW. In a new place one can see the magic that passes as mundane for the familiar observer. Through photography I collect images of the ‘everyday’ and compose an order out of those random moments to use as surfaces for the virtual vessels that I create. From the interplay of city lights and water surfaces, reflections occur that are real, metaphorical and profound.
My earlier work utilised compositions created from heavenly bodies, images available from the Hubble space probe, the universe is a big place, it interests me.
The work is neither art nor craft. Somewhere within the creation of images I hope to unravel some of the secrets that posit me as part of the universe. It’s a personal journey that may be of interest. There is no meaning.
Ken Ford Hobart, Australia May 1998
Above is my artist statement for the exhibition Craft Is Dead; Long Live Craft at Craft Victoria in May 1998. My contribution to the show was a set of large format inkjet prints. “Reflective States I – IV” Ken Ford 1998
Reflective States I – V – photographic montages built in 3D modelling software. The surfaces, environments and backgrounds are mostly mirror image montages using photographs from around the dock precinct of Hobart in low light. The software capabilities in 1998/9 were primitive compared to the speed of rendering in the 2020s. Each image would take over night to render of 8 to 10 hours. Something that could be done in under 5 minutes on today’s computers.
These 5 images were produced at a later date as 4 colour process on glaze decal serigraphs on commercial 200mm x 250mm tiles. see Ceramic Decals.
Ken Ford Art. 