About

THIS COUNTRY is an artist led exhibition supported by Korea Craft and Design Foundation in partnership with London Craft Week. Curated by studio collective Forest + Found, the exhibition platforms seven artists working in the UK who demonstrate deep commitment to their understanding of material traditions within contemporary and conceptual art practice. Featuring artists Max Bainbridge, Abigail Booth, Sayan Chanda, Nancy Fuller, Jonathan Michael Ray, Frances Pinnock and Lotte Scott, the exhibition is hosted by Crafts Council Gallery in Islington, London.

Bringing together artists whose work engages in conversations around shifting cultural identities bound up in their relationship to place and selfhood, the exhibition draws upon an unbroken history of making re-interpreted through the hand and mind of each artist. Interrogating these ever-changing narratives through physical entanglements with the body and object, each artist unravels traditions of making as they explore shared histories of memory and material. As some engage in the specificity of time and place, others seek the more ambiguous space that occupies the inner self, dreams and memory. Often informed by a multiplicity of cultural references or past experiences, the works in ‘This Country’ seek to question traditional ideas of place and belonging, and instead, draw upon collective cultural reimagining’s to examine the origin of things, where layered identifies shift and are remade. Drawing on folklore, memory, rural traditions and subjective experiences, the works collide in a rich materiality driven by personal encounters with objects, mythologies and landscapes. The materiality of the works themselves becomes the collective carrier of meaning as each artist is in a continual dialogue between the body, mind and object within the making of their work.

This exhibition has been generously funded by Korea Craft and Design Foundation as part of their ongoing collaboration with London Craft Week as they collectively work towards a common goal of actively exchanging craft cultures between Korea and the UK. The exhibition and coinciding artist talk will be documented and broadcast online to Korean audiences to coincide with Korea Craft Week that runs concurrently to London Craft Week. Crafts Council’s gallery is the natural home for an exhibition around land, identity and craft. The exhibition coincides with a new programme of the same name, presented by Crafts – Crafts Council’s magazine – focusing on craft’s role in English identity and culture. Both the exhibition and programme are curated and presented independently of each other: yet their shared name reflects a common urge to explore identity through contemporary art and craft practice.