Feb
2009
DesignArt bends over backwards?
Sebastian Brajkovic: Lathe V, Bronze, embroidered upholstery, Edition of 8.
Over the past few years the term ‘DesignArt’ has been growing in use. That’s not Design and Art, or even the old educational combo Art & Design, but one word, ‘DesignArt’. Whilst this is clearly a rather fuzzy label, it is an attempt to reflect the sprawling borders of creative practice.
Generally fuzzy labels can obscure the point, but if nothing else it gives writers and bloggers something to bash against to help determine and define the scale of any paradigm shift in practice, and the markets and audiences it serves. With a training as an artist, and years experience as a designer, this is a title which intrigues me as I’m constantly jumping over the parapet to see what design can learn, borrow, and steal from other creative models, no matter how divergent. If DesignArt is a new model of practice to be taken seriously, why stop there, shouldn’t we also consider DesignLiterature, DesignAirtrafficcontrol, or DesignCircus?
There’s no doubt that multidisciplinary practice has something to offer the world, which specialism cannot, I’ll be writing more on this in a following post which looks at connection between sustainability, the markets and the need for design practice to adapt to those changes. Having worked as an installation artist for a number of years, it does feel like the world of design catching up the world of art in a lot of ways. And there’s a lot to glean from art practice,context is 50% of the work, understanding human relationships to space and to objects, storytelling, the list goes on.
So what are we to make of the market being created for DesignArt such as that of Sebastian Brajkovic, currently on show at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery (a business which specialises in promoting the converging fields of art and design through editing limited-edition works). On analysis, the majority of the galleries DesignArt practitioner’s are actually defiantly artists, rather than designers. (Marc Quinn, Atelier van Lieshout, Ron Arad, Wendell Castel, Ingrid Donat and extends to the current generation : Sebastian Brajkovic, Robert Stadler, Pablo Reinoso, Demakersvan, Xavier Lust, Vincent Dubourg and Mathieu Lehanneur.
Maybe it’s about recognising the role which art brings to a world; it is our cultural lifeline, the thing which keeps us growing, innovating and creative, and yet in less certain economic times it might otherwise be demoted. Personally, I feel that the longer that DesignArt refuses definition, the better; the questioning which pushes practitioners from all backgrounds to extend their practice, to risk working across boundaries, will create some interesting and engaging results.
You can see the work of Sebastian Brajkovic at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in from 5 February to 14 March: http://cwgdesign.com
Further links on DesignArt can be found through:
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