Lueckenhausen, H, Which Way to Modern? Craft Victoria, vol 24, no 226, Summer, 1994/5, pp 10-12

The idea of the crafts as an industry, which seems so vexatious to some, has cropped up again via a series of individual and group furniture exhibitions seen in Melbourne during the second half of '94. The range of agendas, beliefs and hopes that is embodied in the various manifestations of contemporary furniture makes as good a vehicle for examining some themes central to our material culture as any: to begin with - Artists and Industry, a big idea on a tiny budget looking for another incarnation.

Just in time for Furniture '95, enter Valerie Austin, Artists and Industry's new Director. An articulate, accomplished, painter, gallery administrator and architect, her desire is to see the "re-invention of the simplicity and poetry of minimalism: the way a thing can be absolutely right without artifice, decoration or pretension".
She succeeds Bruce Filley, the second Director (after Anna Griffiths), who had come to Australia with a North American can-do mix of trades all-rounder and fine arts graduate. Carpentry offered the means to make a living while furniture loomed as the preferred vehicle for morphing the practical artisanry of trade skill with the desire to make a mark.
The agendas of these two people mirror at least part of the recent past and projected future of Artists and Industry.

The first Fringe Furniture show, for which Bruce was the principal catalyst was a text book response to the need to make, to sell and consequently to succeed. Funded in the classical cooperative spirit of the up and coming by the artists themselves it bought yet again, into the discourse between those whose intention it was to embody fringe politics and those for whom the fringe was so far the closest available position to an imagined centre. The next step was to found a cooperative of six designer makers calling itself Urban Works which became the backbone of the second Fringe Furniture show. The shared vision was of furniture as an expressive manifestation, of the functional object as art. The reality for Urban Works was architectural jobbing which in turn funded some experimental work.

The prognosis may have been naive but at one stage or another most creative people share it. If only we can be seen, if only clients knew this is available, if only the public knew what people were doing - we could be successful. It's our version of the Hollywood dream. With a few notable exceptions the most enthusiasm comes from the artistic fringe, which does not have the potential to become a client base.

This is not the constituency on which Valerie now has her eye in any case, she looks to the "big community of people" who want to see more lineal, hard edged designer products, who in her opinion appreciate the beauty of Modernism via geometry, the angle, the dissecting point, who understand and love the architect influenced product. The 'confusion' between real design and craft and art product has grown out of the Arts and Crafts movement of the 20's, which magpied the political space from modern design. "Design is a discipline, very often craft is something else."

The brief for Artists and Industry was originally understood to be to provide linkage, to broker between artist/designers and manufacturers. One method involved scraping together funds to pay designers for concept drawings. Bruce was himself one of those designers but the next step never happened, it never went ahead. When he took on the job of brokering for others he became disillusioned with the catch 22 inherent in not having successes to cite to sceptical manufacturers without the support of whom those successes could never eventuate. With the original funding from Jennings Industries coming to an end the only hope was to realise some tangible showpieces, if not in manufacture then at least with the potential for manufacture so when the running of the Fringe show became available again, Artists and Industry took it over. The lessons were renewed - designer makers were thrilled, the fringe was entertained, manufacturers couldn't have cared less. Ironically when Bruce managed, with Pat Sabine's help, to move the sixth Fringe Furniture exhibition to 333 Collins St. and lift the image closer to the realm of mainstream furniture, closer to the interests of the design and even (marginally) to that of the production fraternity, the section of the original constituency that was committed to fringe politics was horrified.

Thus ended the coalition. Discussions with Richard Wherett resulted in Furniture '93 (at the end of '92) becoming part of the Melbourne International Festival and Fringe returned to Fitzroy. That suits Belinda Pringle, ex art teacher and sculptor just fine. Contracted to coordinate the Fringe show in '93 and '94, she operates in the community arts genre, citing the guiding principle of facilitation, not ownership. Her dilemma is that the fringe presents another paradox. On the one hand the 'gritty', temporary, 'now' feel of the concentrated three week fringe program is not only as much as existing resources can handle, it is widely accepted as a preferred vernacular arts strategy. On the other hand, for all the 'post modern' flirting with the principles of multiple truths, multiple realities, the very name and essence of fringe is classical, colonial thinking. She wants to work from the edge without being permanently relegated to it. Until the present, that has remained a goal common to the two shows, both wanting to showcase the work and advance the careers of designer/makers. In truth, Belinda does not believe Furniture Fringe is big enough, mainstream enough or will ever be sustained enough to be a useful stepping stone for them. What it can do is offer artists and 'casual' makers of furniture a temporary spotlight, their fifteen minutes. It will also remain a vehicle for the indomitable spirit of those up and coming. Whatever decisions are made by any organisation or individual, the phenomenon will perpetually reinvent itself in some form.

For Valerie, for whom craft, with its "love of poetry and metaphor" is neither disciplined nor industry focussed, the Fringe is another category altogether. Echoing the zeal of Adolph Loos who felt decoration was not only 'shit' it bordered on the immoral and the criminal, she cannot help but find the exuberant theatricality of the Fringe celebrates not only over designed kitsch but also the immorality of conspicuous consumption.

Policy implications for Artists and Industry via the classical SWOT test were seen as: strengths - designer/makers, weaknesses - manufacturers were not interested, opportunities - this was the big question, threats - designers were not skilled enough in business and professional practice. A critical decision was taken. If links with manufacturers were to remain elusive, the small-scale production capacities of designer/makers might provide the tangible products that were desperately needed for showcasing and to get into manufacture by the back door. The result was a new program - Retail Active.

The method used was to set up advisory panels to critique, even to workshop ideas brought forward by designer/makers. Retailers such as Ross Maddern could comment on packaging, labeling and presentation, an accountant on costing - whatever critical advice was needed to make the idea work on all levels could be had through this process. A good idea, but impossible to resource in the long term from the arts gift alone. That key corporate sponsor, the industry visionary to replace Jennings and match Ministry funding was never found. Bits of project funding were garnered from a variety of sources but no solid core was established.

Looking from the outside in, the original brief of Artists and Industry to embrace a broad range of products seemed by this stage to have been replaced with one of dealing only with furniture. Bruce takes this on himself as a mixture of his own interests and expertise and consequently, being able to identify pathways which were to have eventually been expanded to other products. Opportunism is always a factor in planning and in this case the opportunity surfaced in the person of Walter Jehne who had been funded by the National Industry Extension Service (NIES) to work with the Furniture Manufacturers Association of Australia (FMAA) to put together the Furniture 2000 agenda.

Thus came about the next platform for Artists and Industry - Furniture Cognita, a national furniture competition the goals of which were not surprisingly, quite close to its original brief. Juried winners were to have their designs prototyped. Interest from designers was, as ever, overwhelming but the initial expressions of interest from manufacturers was not matched by action and funds raised were way under target. None the less, eleven prototypes were realized, three were sent to the FMAA promotion in Japan and one was bought and further prototyped by an American company.

Here's the rub. Anyone who has ever been to a conference on design, on the arts, on industry, on export - in fact on anything touching on Australian material culture knows Australia missed the manufacturing boat and that especially after the war, we didn't develop a significant design or manufacturing base. What we don't always appreciate, especially those still in the 'if only' stage of their careers is the active hostility of our relatively small fraternity of furniture manufacturers can show to change. The intensity of the hostility directed at Bruce and Cathy Demos, coordinator of Furniture Cognita by representatives of the Victorian furniture industry was breathtaking.
The uncomfortable fact about innovation is that it is threatening to those responsible for the status quo. New ideas imply a deficiency in those who haven't had them.

How new then is Artists and Industry's new idea? Valerie has a vision of a permanent 'technical arts' space. If she can graft that agenda onto that of the organization, if she can promote the 'favoured' aesthetic, raise the debate, increase the data base of supportive manufacturers, garner some public and corporate funding, then all of us, designer/makers included, will be drawn behind in the slipstream.

Furniture '95 as an exhibition holds together and presents better than any of its predecessors. It was more uniformly curated and more specific in its aesthetic and its preferences than ever before. Why then did it make some people uncomfortable? Comments made to me, even by members of the "underground fellowship" Valerie wants to champion included, “cold, plastic, it all looks as though it was designed by one person”. All this is, and will ever be, arguable. For my part I cannot help but be cynical about proselytising about the need to avoid the dead hand of the past and looking to the future in the presence of historical Meadmores and Featherstones, however worthy, with the litany of a movement that has been with us for the better part of a century.

On the one hand we have people in the crafts, in the Fringe and in design looking to mark their own territory and identifying the need to clarify their specific objectives and programs. On the other hand we have a culture, which has always separated the various aspects of its creative endeavour to the point where each was alone and marginalized. Only recently have we begun to understand the dual need for coordinated national endeavour, and for a place in the international context. That is - 'international context', not international image. As Bruce Filley asks, "What is the point of trying to out Europe the Europeans?" Is the biggest challenge for our creative people really to fit themselves to the limits of existing Australian manufacturing infrastructure? So long as we imagine the only pathway to global marketing (as opposed to mass production) is by importing or mimicking a minimal 'universal' aesthetic, our manufacturers, who are almost always reactive, rarely proactive, will take that path.

Having found that the grass was not necessarily greener on the arts side of the fence some crafts practitioners jumped into the design paddock. My own biases lead me to believe that may well be more fruitful, providing craftspeople take something of themselves with them. These days I read expressions such as 'understated, simple, pure lines' and even 'devoid of artistic ego' (whatever an ego free idea might be) with increasing frequency. These terms are benign and general enough, however in an era sometimes reviled for revisionism are we revising modernism? Or are we still on the journey there? In the next article I will look at some examples of how individuals and groups are positioning themselves.