Exhibiting craft in the church, the factory and the city in Portugal and the UK, 2012-2022: a study of craft and its display contexts

Jorge, Inês ORCID: 0000-0002-5592-8178 (2024). Exhibiting craft in the church, the factory and the city in Portugal and the UK, 2012-2022: a study of craft and its display contexts. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates contemporary craft-based exhibitions held in Portugal and the UK between 2012 and 2022. It examines three key sites of display: the church, the factory, and the city. This expands the emerging scholarship on the exhibition of craft, which has largely focused on white cube and domestic settings.

One of the research questions that guides this dissertation is the following: How is craft shaped by its specific sites of display? The study draws on archival research and ethnographical techniques such as fieldwork, observation, photography, interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups.

This thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter one analyses contemporary craft-based exhibitions in the church. It takes as case studies Cristina Rodrigues’s exhibition Heaven Descends to Earth (2015) and the permanent installation The Kingdom of Heaven (2017), respectively held at the Monastery of Alcobaça, Portugal, and Manchester Cathedral UK.

Chapter two investigates contemporary craft-based exhibitions that draw on the factory. It identifies and sets out an emerging typology of craft display, which I term the material-based post-industrial biennial. The chapter focuses on Contextile: Contemporary Textile Art Biennial, held in the Portuguese city of Guimarães since 2012.

Chapter three examines contemporary craft-based exhibitions that establish itineraries of objects, people, and memories across urban sites. It delves into Side-by-Side (2018), an exhibition developed by US practitioner Ann Hamilton in Guimarães, which devised a circuit along various cultural, commercial, and industrial spaces in the city.

Based on the analysis of case studies, it is argued that craft can connect spaces, places, and geographies; fill sites with alternative stories; create and re-create diplomatic ties; bring makers together; prompt conversations around colonialism, imperialism, and their implications in the present; and generate intercultural, interfaith, and intergenerational encounters.

This dissertation contributes to knowledge through its focus on craft and exhibitions, which offers an opportunity to work across sites, practices, people, and histories that have been held apart. Its emphasis on unconventional spaces warrants a chance to examine class issues, from the royalty and clergy to industrial workers and those who specialise in traditional craft skills. The project’s focus on Portugal and the UK enables an exploration of the historical connections between both countries; the divides between nations; the dynamic relations between centre and periphery; and different understandings of craft. By looking at exhibitions from the lens of craft, this research makes visible practices, people, spaces, and sensations which continue to be neglected in art historical scholarship.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):