Artisa Curatorial Fellowship: Variations on a Blank

Shai Akram, maker-designer and co-founder of Studio Alt Shift, was the Crafts Council’s inaugural Artisa Fellow. As part of the Artisa Curatorial Fellowship, Shai was given unlimited access to the Crafts Council Collection. During her research she began to think about new ways of categorising the works, beginning by classifying over thirty items into three themes: 1. Variations on a blank, 2. Disrupting a process, and 3. Off-plinth. In this theme, Variations on a Blank, Shai looked at repetition, featuring objects that share a repeated starting point or a common and uniform repeated part. The beginning is often the same before hand manipulation interrupts the making process. You can read Shai’s full report here.