Powerfully made

I hate to disagree with my mother, but that is what I found myself doing on Sunday during a trip to the V&A. One of their two excellent exhibitions at the moment is The Power of Making, looking at the presence of craft practices and products in modern-day life, and exploring the materials and methods behind these. The exhibition is staged jointly with the Crafts Council.

I felt it was a small but powerful show, which marshalled a visually stimulating range of craft pieces from furniture to jewellery, boats to bionic body parts, dresses to sugar sculptures. It made interesting relationships between the craft practices behind these and managed to give a sense of the materials without being able to touch the pieces. It gave a sense of the producers as both artists and makers, working between studio and industry. I particularly liked the set of three screens which showed a close-focus film of the artists at work on the objects in the show.

As a maker herself, my mother comes at the show, of course, from a very different angle to me who, if I can claim any specialism, would approach it as a curator/collections person. I enjoyed the visual effect of the pieces juxtaposed up the walls of the gallery, and felt it gave a good sense of the range and power of contemporary craft. This is, of course, old hat to anyone in the world themselves who has known this power for years, and finds an exhibition like this somewhat limited and/or banal; with a simplistic message about the power of craft and the nature of making in the 21st century. Perhaps one of the featured makers acting as a joint curator would have added nuance to this exhibition?

Luckily, we were in accord over the other special exhibition, Postmodernism, which stages an impressively clear and simple account of the origins and growth of postmodern design, art, fashion, music and film. The curators have used the exhibition space itself to power the narrative, using reconstructed architecture, billboard adverts, neon signs and scaffolding within the construction. Equally, they have used film and music within the show to great effect, transporting the visitor to the 1980s and 90s. Powerful stuff.