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Solo exhibition at JamFactory Contemporary Craft and Design, Adelaide SA
2008
Writing that accompanied the exhibition by Fulvia Mantelli
small is beautiful
In an era when, for the first time in history, cities are more populated than rural regions and human generated waste is at an all-time high, Christine Cholewa wonders where we are being led by the “pre-packaged, pre-fabricated lifestyle, disconnected from nature” 1 of modern life in manmade spaces. Cholewa’s first solo exhibition takes its title from E.F. Shummacher’s Small is Beautiful – economics as if people mattered. First published in 1973, it summoned a major attitudinal shift – which the developed world’s super powers are only now beginning to acknowledge as being vital to the future of the earth and humankind – and called a cease to treating natural resources as income rather than capital which if squandered “threatens life itself” 2. While cities can facilitate a positive quality and ease of living, how do we define ourselves in the context of startling statistics of global warming and lifestyle trends? “Not everyone can own a car” 3.
Canadian born and raised, Christine is one of a modest count of South Australian ‘glassies’ whose studio practise dis-concerns itself with forms of function and their embellishment; instead approaching glass as the vehicle to embellish a notion. The work is more about concept than object or medium. A quiet activist, not an ear(th)-bashing preacher, her art-making continues to be informed by observations of dominant behavioural patterns towards the environment, and whispers encouragements to notice the smaller details of our relationship with the natural and fabricated worlds. Previously, she has embodied rain and puddles in glass installations, and subverted the function of glass (food) bowls with embedded images of garbage. This current body of work highlights our paradoxical pursuit of the appeal that lies in the hazardous, and uses the reflective nature of glass to engender a reflective approach to the pace and impact of contemporary life.
Driven by environmental issues, Cholewa uses the ‘found’ surfaces of car rear-vision mirrors. As domestically familiar objects, our interaction with them as artworks is immediate. They invoke a looking back on prevailing environmentally unfriendly ‘economic’ decisions, placing them in our immediate line of retrospective sight and always in the corner of our eye. Engraved snapshots of sweeping power lines, in grid formation, reference our connectedness: physically across country vastness to city labyrinths; and metaphorically in our actions globally (including excessive power consumption). A sandblasted panoramic narrative, travelling through open landscape then high-density metropolis, traces our impact on the earth and implies an uncertain future. A stack of mirrors crammed with traffic jams signal the impossibility of our swelling consumerist thirst. A series of layered glass panels sandwiching patterns of Stoby poles and streetlights, place us at a moving window watching the world go by. Whether passengers/pacifists or drivers/activists, the present is our doing and the future depends on us – perhaps most importantly to notice and act on the small things that collectively have the greatest impact.
During her 2007 three month residency in Farnham, UK 4, Cholewa focused on combining image with glass, not as decoration but to explore the relationships between object, material and image. The result was a visual diary of distilled daily glimpses of her time overseas. Instead of words on paper – which are inevitably folded away – its pages are ninety unique blown glass cups – items we physically grasp to drink (replenish) from daily. A new cup accompanied her every day to capture a random moment sketched in glass enamel pencil (later fired on permanently). While they carry personal stories through which the artist pondered her own effects on the earth, they are also widely recognisable by virtue of the kinship between collective and personal experiences. Similarly, her glass brooches bearing snippets from the background of our everyday are portable reminders to take another look at our association with the ordinary things around us.
Agreeing with Schummacher’s assertion that “from bigness comes impersonality, insensitivity...small is free, efficient, creative, enjoyable, enduring”, Cholewa offers intimate works that draw acute attention to familiar yet often overlooked details. She advocates a slowing down to contemplate – upon say, the humble domestic electrical outlet, or maze of city power lines, what they do, why and how. This thwarts the all too common selective blindness that we apply to potentially perilous habits of economic and industrial evolution; in favour of the hope and powerfulness of small actions by many individuals in remedying our ailing global condition.
Fulvia Mantelli 2008
Independent Curator
1. email from CC to FM 12.04.08
2. E.F. Schummacher Small is Beautiful – economics as if people mattered, reprint Harper & Row 1989, p. 17; originally published Blond and Briggs 1973
3. from an unknown BBC radio program about world population, Feb or March 2008
4. residency at University College of Creative Arts; A HAT International Research Fellowship for the Contemporary Crafts, managed by A Fine Line and major sponsor by Arts Council England in Partnership with various schools
solo exhibition at JamFactory Contemporary Craft and Design, Adelaide SA
small is beautiful
In an era when, for the first time in history, cities are more populated than rural regions and human generated waste is at an all-time high, Christine Cholewa wonders where we are being led by the “pre-packaged, pre-fabricated lifestyle, disconnected from nature” 1 of modern life in manmade spaces. Cholewa’s first solo exhibition takes its title from E.F. Shummacher’s Small is Beautiful – economics as if people mattered. First published in 1973, it summoned a major attitudinal shift – which the developed world’s super powers are only now beginning to acknowledge as being vital to the future of the earth and humankind – and called a cease to treating natural resources as income rather than capital which if squandered “threatens life itself” 2. While cities can facilitate a positive quality and ease of living, how do we define ourselves in the context of startling statistics of global warming and lifestyle trends? “Not everyone can own a car” 3.
Canadian born and raised, Christine is one of a modest count of South Australian ‘glassies’ whose studio practice dis-concerns itself with forms of function and their embellishment; instead approaching glass as the vehicle to embellish a notion. The work is more about concept than object or medium. A quiet activist, not an ear(th)-bashing preacher, her art-making continues to be informed by observations of dominant behavioural patterns towards the environment, and whispers encouragements to notice the smaller details of our relationship with the natural and fabricated worlds. Previously, she has embodied rain and puddles in glass installations, and subverted the function of glass (food) bowls with embedded images of garbage. This current body of work highlights our paradoxical pursuit of the appeal that lies in the hazardous, and uses the reflective nature of glass to engender a reflective approach to the pace and impact of contemporary life.
Driven by environmental issues, Cholewa uses the ‘found’ surfaces of car rear-vision mirrors. As domestically familiar objects, our interaction with them as artworks is immediate. They invoke a looking back on prevailing environmentally unfriendly ‘economic’ decisions, placing them in our immediate line of retrospective sight and always in the corner of our eye. Engraved snapshots of sweeping power lines, in grid formation, reference our connectedness: physically across country vastness to city labyrinths; and metaphorically in our actions globally (including excessive power consumption). A sandblasted panoramic narrative, traveling through open landscape then high-density metropolis, traces our impact on the earth and implies an uncertain future. A stack of mirrors crammed with traffic jams signal the impossibility of our swelling consumerist thirst. A series of layered glass panels sandwiching patterns of Stoby poles and streetlights, place us at a moving window watching the world go by. Whether passengers/pacifists or drivers/activists, the present is our doing and the future depends on us – perhaps most importantly to notice and act on the small things that collectively have the greatest impact.
During her 2007 three month residency in Farnham, UK 4, Cholewa focused on combining image with glass, not as decoration but to explore the relationships between object, material and image. The result was a visual diary of distilled daily glimpses of her time overseas. Instead of words on paper – which are inevitably folded away – its pages are ninety unique blown glass cups – items we physically grasp to drink (replenish) from daily. A new cup accompanied her every day to capture a random moment sketched in glass enamel pencil (later fired on permanently). While they carry personal stories through which the artist pondered her own effects on the earth, they are also widely recognisable by virtue of the kinship between collective and personal experiences. Similarly, her glass brooches bearing snippets from the background of our everyday are portable reminders to take another look at our association with the ordinary things around us.
Agreeing with Schummacher’s assertion that “from bigness comes impersonality, insensitivity...small is free, efficient, creative, enjoyable, enduring”, Cholewa offers intimate works that draw acute attention to familiar yet often overlooked details. She advocates a slowing down to contemplate – upon say, the humble domestic electrical outlet, or maze of city power lines, what they do, why and how. This thwarts the all too common selective blindness that we apply to potentially perilous habits of economic and industrial evolution; in favour of the hope and powerfulness of small actions by many individuals in remedying our ailing global condition.
Fulvia Mantelli 2008
Independent Curator
1. email from CC to FM 12.04.08
2. E.F. Schummacher Small is Beautiful – economics as if people mattered, reprint Harper & Row 1989, p. 17; originally published Blond and Briggs 1973
3. from an unknown BBC radio program about world population, Feb or March 2008
4. residency at University College of Creative Arts; A HAT International Research Fellowship for the Contemporary Crafts, managed by A Fine Line and major sponsor by Arts Council England in Partnership with various schools