Gesamtkunsthandwerk

Total artwork

These works reflect the experimental processes of three artists – jeweller Karl Fritsch, furniture designer Martino Gamper, and sculptor Francis Upritchard. All works are from the installation Gesamtkunsthandwerk, produced on a joint residency in New Plymouth in 2011. During this residency, the artists worked collaboratively with one another and local craftspeople, including Nicholas Brandon.

‘Gesamtkunsthandwerk’ refers to the German idea of a ‘total artwork’ combining art, craft, design, and architecture, with particular emphasis on the handmade. For the artists, the collaboration required by the project helped ‘to drop distinctions and to push ourselves to learn and to inspire each other’.

Ideas at the heart of this project include ‘to forget or unlearn convention’ and ‘taking found objects and changing them’. New Zealand Formica furniture, for example, is reconfigured in unexpected ways.

This text was prepared for the Collecting Contemporary exhibition, February 2012.