Intelligent Trouble @ The Festival of Materials and Making, Kings College, London
Helen Carnac, David Gates, Katy Hackney, Shane Waltener
7-11 November 2011

Using the staircase at the river-end of the main axis of the Strand campus as site and inspiration, the artist-led collective Intelligent Trouble will draw on rope-making as a way of working with spaces, materials, processes and people. The staircase moves through the vertical height of the whole building and will be used as a vast studio space. The artists will respond to the space, working over the course of the week to make a constantly evolving and growing intervention. Intelligent Trouble are a London-based collective of makers and artists, one of the founder-members is a PhD student in the humanities department at KCL.

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Outdoor Weave-In, 2011
Mixed fibre yarns, cotton and jute twine
Powerhouse Museum Discovery Centre
13 August through to April 2012

A site specific installation by Shane Waltener with participants at the Powerhouse Discovery Centre.

Created over the course of one day (Saturday 13 August 2011) during Sydney Design, the installation consists of a series interconnecting woven pathways inspired by ‘desire lines’, paths that are developed by erosion caused by footfall. In this case these paths were stitched rather than created by footfall, and instead of describing the shortest way from a point of origin to a destination, the artist and the participants meandered through the grove, joining other paths as they stitched their way through it. The work is not in any way a mechanical reproduction of a pre planned design, but a physical manifestation (in stitch) of the participants’ negotiation between their own making, and the environment they found themselves in.

The result is a large web like piece of fabric, that links, and appear to support, a number of trees in the grove, and prompts the visitors and passers to take a fresh look at the historic eucalyptus plantation as they walk alongside it.

Thank you to the Discovery Centre visitors who participated in the creation of this work and to the Baulkham Hills and Hills College of TAFE Event Management students who worked as artist assistants on the day.

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Knitted and Looped
Sydney Design Festival 2011, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
30 July - 14 August

A growing lace installation commissioned for the Turbine Hall at the Powerhouse Museum, part of Sydney Design 2011. Over 400 participants contributed to the making of the piece over the week of festival.

The piece was shown in conjunction with Another World Wide Web, a large scale installation on three levels of the museum, part of the Love Lace exhibition at the museum.

For more information on either projects, see links below:

http://www.sydneydesign.com.au/2011/
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/lovelace/

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Stitching Revolutions: Shane Waltener with Craftspace and Husqvarna Viking at the Stitching and Knitting Show 2010

Encounter craft as a performance. Shane Waltener works live with participants on six Husqvarna Viking overlocking machines in the Palm Court Foyer at Alexandra Palace.

Reworking fabric from old clothes, a group of stitchers acted as one to create Stitching Circle #1, a piece commissioned for Alexandra Palace during the Knitting and Stitching Show. They simultaneously passed and received their continuous creation negotiating the pace of the stitching to keep the work flowing. The stitched installation evolved forming a growing suspended circular display over the course of the exhbition.

The circle of stitchers celebrated the histories and memories of cloth and made new conversations through fabric and stitch.

Craftspace and Husqvarna Viking presented this exciting event.
The event linked to the touring exhibition Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution.

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Hybrid Basketry at Origin

A basket is a bowl is a hat is a ball is a bird is a cage is a bin is a basket…

Working with the idea that you can weave a basket with almost anything and in so many different ways, Shane Waltener lead an interactive project at Origin in October 2009 at Somerset House, London. Visitors had the opportunity to customise basketware and contribute to a woven sculptural installation. Basketry items were stripped, transformed, passed on to others, and incorporated into a growing display in the Crafting Space at the fair. Salvaged basketware,domestic items and a variety of materials ranging from natural fibres to plastics were used as weaving materials.

The installation blended the sculptural with the functional. Various techniques of weaving, knotting, stitching, plaiting and netting were introduced on a daily basis, making a connection between a range of applied arts traditions and basketry. The communal making and time spent weaving aimed to prompt a renewed engagement and enthusiasm in basketry, and making in general.

For more information on the event, visit the following link, or read the following article.

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Sweet Celebrations: An exhibition that's a piece of cake
Swan Room, Swan Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon
9 April – 24 July 2011

To mark the Royal Shakespeare Company's 50th Birthday, the RSC invited artist Shane Waltener to transform the Swan Room in the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon into a large birthday cake.

As part of Sweet Celebrations, Shane worked with members of the public to make a frieze around the walls of the room using combined sugarcraft and graffiti techniques. Participants used sugar paste, royal icing and sweets to decorate the walls and contribute to the creation of a large-scale installation.

During a number of hands-on sessions, participants were guided through a range of processes for making decorated sugar tiles or tags. They were encouraged to think about developing designs inspired by the architectural details and motifs from within the building. Outside of these sessions the public visited the exhibition to view the work in progress.

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Tibby Place, Greenman Street, Islington N1
5 July 2010 - 31 July 2010

The Hanging Garlands of Tibby Place was an interactive and participatory installation at Tibby Place using the existing iron framework that remains of old Tibberton Baths as a loom.

Tibberton Baths were built in 1897, known to locals as "the Tib", they were popular swimming baths until 1982. Now all that remains is the iron framework which stands as a curious monument to the former pool, and became the temporary framework for Waltener's performative and participatory installation. Web like patterns were woven in and around the structure over the course of the month by participants and dancers physically created the woven interventions through a contemporary twist on the traditional "maypole" type of performance. See the events page for more information.

This art work is one of a series of Secret Garden Projects commissioned by Islington Council.

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Garland #21 (step and stitch), a new piece commissioned for the exhibition Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution kick started with a performance on Friday 23rd October at 7pm, at the Waterhall, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Garland #21 (step and stitch) is the latest in a series of interactive installations started in 2006, involving members of the public in weaving and stitching. With this new piece, a series of choreographic sequences were developed linking movements associated with dance steps ands stitches. The performance stood as an invitation for members of the public to contribute to the piece by stitching, knotting and weaving, and while doing so, reflect on craft as a ritualised and communal activity. The piece was devised by the artist in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Cheryl McChesney Jones.

For more information on the exhibition from Craftspace, curated by Helen Carnac, see www.takingtime.org and www.craftspace.co.uk

For opening times at the museum and the events programme see www.bmag.org.uk

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