the shape of things

Maggie Scott has been awarded a bursary to develop new work by The Shape of Things – TSOT – a national contemporary Crafts project. Working in conjunction with The City Gallery and Leicester museum, an exhibition of her work is scheduled for April 2012

The shape of things is an ambitious and unusually significant artists, exhibition, and venue development initiative happening over the next three years.

This exciting initiative provides bursaries to artist makers for the production of significant bodies of new craftwork as a context for considering and debating what distinctive contribution artists make to influence or reflect national identity, to connect Britain with global cultures and to reference the intercultural nature of British society

The shape of things focuses on issues of cultural diversity in contemporary crafts practice and aims to encourage a diverse market and audience representative of society.

“I would love to see a critical and open debate about representations of Ethnicity - what is the function of Art and Craft in a multicultural society? Who is it for? “

“I am very interested in developing a dialogue with an ethnically diverse Audience, in particular one that identifies as Black…”

“I am convinced that part of the ongoing struggle to get more ethnically diverse groups interested in Art and Craft is to address the lack of non-Eurocentric images and objects. I would therefore intend my work to contribute to, or reflect on, the question of national Identity and what it might mean to be English/British/European in the 21st century……”

“At the moment I am very preoccupied with my own history as an English born, African Caribbean heritage, woman and am considering using the ‘shape of things’ bursary to expand this autobiographical work and explore further the larger multicultural, multiethnic implications of my, and, therefore, other, family histories. “

the shape of things
www.theshapeofthings.org.uk