‘Design must have art alongside it in order to live.’ Maija Isola 1977 Have the long-established categories of visual art, craft and design ever adequately expressed what it is that designers and makers of objects actually do? Sure, there are many practitioners who can be clearly identified as such, but others simply scratch their heads and wonder what box to tick, as their works can be described as all, or none of the above. There is no category for ‘between’ or ‘neither’. Blurred Boundaries looks at the work of nine Queenslandbased practitioners where these three territories fuse, intersect and react. What does it mean to define a territory, to mark out its boundaries? What is to be gained or lost by doing this? How far have we come from Greenberg’s notion of modernism where painting is defined by its flatness, and sculpture by its three-dimensionality. Decoration and craft didn’t get a look in, and as for design, well, that was commercial art, and no-one would ever admit to participating in that... People want definitions, categories, boxes into which the unruly can be placed, named and consumed. Easy for some, not for others. What happens to those that slip between the categories? Those who are ‘too crafty’ for the art board, ‘too arty’ for the craft board and ‘too designed’ for anyone? In terms of geographic and political boundaries, official borders are currently being dismantled as part of unified Europe, but in other places vast protectionist walls are being built. The most visible are constructed of cement and wire, but there are also barriers to trade, to migration, to free speech and, online, firewalls and systems that allow or restrict the flow of communication. Boundaries exist, but are not as obvious as they may seem. In visual art, craft and design how is this manifested? Borders are regularly and spectacularly undermined by hackers, corrupt officials and illegal traders. Their association is with rebellion and lawlessness. What do cultural hackers look like? Robyn Daw Russell Milledge
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