Critical Craft Collective: SOUP
Published
Opening of the SOUP studio at Bergen Assembly space
16 Nov, 19:00
Opening hours:
17-19 Nov, 12:00-16:00
19 Nov 13:00 – Collective performative meal in the SOUP studio (sign up here)
Venue: Bergen Assembly, Halfdan Kjerulfs gate 4
Building on their interests in data visualisation; translating knowledge between different systems of encoding; asking questions of accessibility and participation in digital cultures – the Critical Craft Collective (CCC) invites you to SOUP – a project initiated and presented in cooperation with Tenthaus, centred around the concept of comfort embodied by soup.
Recognising food as a source of love language in many cultures, the SOUP project expands and unpacks the idea of food as a tangible material, a vehicle for human relations, to look at notions of care and repair. This project will materialise through a series of activities by the artists in the open studio held by CCC at Bergen Assembly’s office space.
From stone soup narratives and soup recipes to aromatic elements and ingredients and to artworks stemming from data visualisation – the SOUP project involves an active process of deconstructing the multifaceted meanings of “soup” by thinking deeply about the conventions of this humble dish, the stories and heritage it carries, the vessels and containers that hold it, as well as how soup may be read as a verb, referring to notions of powering up or to gather something.
Paying heed to CCC’s ethos on collaborative practices and lateral modes of working, SOUP acknowledges contributions from the various communities across different countries, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds. SOUP is an inquiry into alternative modes of art practices and production, new grounding strategies and tactics for accessibility and participation of the extended communities in digital domains.
The project is curated and produced by Tenthaus.
Critical Craft Collective
Adeline Kueh and Hazel Lim, founders and curator-artist duo of the Critical Craft Collective (CCC), are dedicated to exploring craft within the intersections of contemporary art, design, and technology. CCC is interested in the historical trajectories of these communal practices embedded in craft and the politics of care. Through the collaborative processes of making, they want to explore how storytelling can be powerful tools to de-centre existing power structures in art praxis. With collaborators Joanne Lim, Jonathan Liu and Victoria Hertel, these artists will present the SOUP project during their time in Bergen, Norway.
Adeline Kueh makes installations and socially-embodied works that reconsider the relationship we have with things and rituals around us. Using drawing as a conceptual tool, Adeline looks to cartographies, craft and oral tradition to map out the historical trajectories across time and space through her use of found objects and new productions. As a co-founder of the Critical Craft Collective (Singapore) and the pan-Borneo/UK Serumpun Collective, the centrality of craft in contemporary practice as well as the politics of care are the core focus in her research practice. Currently a Senior Lecturer with the MA Fine Arts programme at LASALLE College of the Arts, Adeline has exhibited internationally. She was involved in the Word of Mouth exhibition in Venice Biennale (2019), the Passion Made Possible Culture Shaper Tribe Films (Singapore Tourism Board, 2019), Hermes Singapore (2016) and World Architecture Festival (2016-7). In 2021, Adeline was part of Singapore Tyler Print Institute’s Visiting Artists Programme (VAP) Residency.
Hazel Lim is a visual artist with a background in painting who employs text, crafting methods and drawings to create works that delve into the production of narratives, notions of displacement, construction of histories and imaginary landscapes. In her current research on the Aesthetics of Care, Hazel is employing crafting techniques such as needlework and paper craft to investigate the utility of diagrams, image making and colour theory, whilst at the same time, interrogating the relationship of craft to the domestic and feminine. Hazel currently leads the BA(Hons) programme in the McNally School of Fine Arts, LASALLE College of the Arts and has taken part in exhibitions showcased in Singapore, Indonesia, Korea, Ireland, Germany, Austria, US and Vietnam. Hazel was an Associate Artist with Substation, Singapore from 2004-2012 and is one of the artists commissioned for Singapore Biennale (2013/2014) and showed her work entitled A Botanical and Wildlife Survey at the Singapore Peranakan Museum. She recently collaborated with her partner, Andreas Schlegel on a commissioned installation work, ‘The Oort Cloud and the Blue Mountain’ for the 2019 Children’s Biennale at the National Gallery of Singapore and the Kinderbiënnale (2021-2022) at Groninger Museum, Netherlands and Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden Museum, Germany, as well as for the Singapore Art Museum: Tanjong Pagar Distripark 2022.
Joanne Lim is a Singapore-based artist, who has graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts with a Bachelors (Hons) in Fine Arts (First class). Since then, she has been nominated for the Takifuji Art Award 2021 and received the Lasalle Award for Academic Excellence in 2022. Interested in translating and visualising data that she collects in long-term projects that involve collaboration with the community, Joanne’s practice conveys data and experience into aesthetic forms to address current social issues through numerous mediums intertwined. Joanne is also part of Mouse Click Click, a Singapore-based art collective that seeks to bring together the disciplines of art, science, and technology.
Jonathan Liu is a visual artist & lecturer working primarily with photography. He is also a founding member of NFT Asia – an artist-led non-profit digital collective aimed at uplifting Asian artists within the NFT Space. He is interested in the dialogue between the Human and the Non-Human, the collaborative potential of dissolving the objective form (of the mechanical eye) into a subjective experience (from the machine). By manipulating various forms of photographic mediums, he questions its dialogic relationship with technology. Through his representation and fragmentation of the landscape, he is interested in revealing the fallibility of the process of recollection as well as the search for the romantic sublime. His work has been exhibited in the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, China, Japan and Singapore. He lectures with the Design Communication and Fine Arts faculties, holds a BA (Hons) Photography from London College of Communication and is currently pursuing his MA Fine Arts at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.
Victoria Hertel is a German-Venezuelan artist whose practice explores the sensory entanglement of the self and non-self. Her immersive installations combine sensor technology, trace and motion to construct distilled sensory encounters that heighten our awareness of the material network we inhabit. Through the synaesthetic experience of these encounters we are invited to expand our understanding of our coexistence in relation to everything within and around us. Hertel received her BFA from the University of Barcelona and her MA in Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore in partnership with Goldsmiths University of London. She has been awarded the Chan-Davies Art Prize for academic excellence in her MA research practice into “Trace as Energy in Materialities”.
Tenthaus Art Collective has been working together in various constellations since 2009. The collective is characterized by an open, process-oriented form of participation and collaboration. They focus on local contexts exploring collectivity and inclusion through different forms of engagement. Tenthaus began as an artists-in-schools project and over a decade later they continue to maintain strong relations to the community and works to cultivate and nurture its environment. Today Tenthaus encompasses both a project room and an exhibition space, a mobile studio, and a wide range of curatorial projects. As a collective Tenthaus reimagines themselves and what it means to be artists working with the public, and what makes a relevant socially engaged practice today. The collective works with discursive events, radio, research, exchanges, workshops and exhibitions with an international orientation. Each of its members brings a distinct set of skills, practices and cultural knowledge.
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Image: Critical Craft Collective