Making the Move: Art or Craft Market

Art or craft?

The debate around whether craft is art, design, both or neither is not a new one. But the current climate is raising new issues for contemporary craft. With changes occurring in the craft landscape, including and threatened closures of prominent craft organizations, and the simultaneous boom in art and design sales, practitioners, gallery owners and policy makers alike are considering craft’s place in the wider cultural marketplace once more.

A successful artist, a commercial gallery owner and an arts consultant will be among the panel addressing the key issues in making the move, such as:

-Is the growing appetite for originality and authenticity stifling the success of contemporary craft or in fact creating new opportunities and energy within the sector?
-Do these traditional divides between art, applied art, craft and design still exist or has craft successfully crossed the divide and entered the mainstream of visual culture
-If and when does work transcend the traditional craft boundaries and how do artists ‘make the move’ from the craft to art market?
-What influences the perceived value of craft in comparison to art and what is the role of marketing in raising the bar?
-Are we seeing a new breed of collectors who place equal value on craft, art and design led pieces?
-Are we seeing a swing back towards more tangible, durable collectable items or an overall rise in demand across the art, applied art and design sectors?

The session will then open to the floor giving you the chance to ask your questions and join the debate and will be followed by networking opportunities over dinks.


Speaker Biographies

Caroline Broadhead
Caroline Broadhead‘s practice brings the unusually autonomous areas of jewellery, textiles and performance art into close relationship. Previous work used clothing to address issues concerning personal identity and more recent work is large scale installations with subtle atmospheres and which draw attention to that which is barely there, or even absent.

Born in 1950, Broadhead trained at the Central School of Art and Design, London. Public collections that hold examples of her work include the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She was the winner of the Jerwood Prize for Applied Arts: Textiles in 1997.


David Gryn
David Gryn is founder and director of Artprojx is a co-marketing, event production and creative strategic consulting agency - utilizing its pre-eminence in the artworld as a leading brand that exhibits and promotes artists' films and videos in the context of the cinema.

Working with a variety of corporate and charitable bodies, individuals and arts institutions both nationally and worldwide, Artprojx plan innovative and viable arts- and culture-focused solutions to integrate with business, marketing and individual needs.

David Gryn also acts as Advisor to Film London's Artists' Moving Image Network and Strategist and Advisor to various art venues and art projects worldwide.


Alison Honour
Alison Honour is an artist and gallery owner. Her gallery, Art-File, in Oxfordshire specializes in awhole spectrum of contemporary art and craft including glass, textiles, metals and jewellery. She is an authority on contemporary art fairs, exhibiting her gallery’s work nationally and internationally.

Alison is also course leader in Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University.

Image courtesy of Caroline Broadhead: Exchange of Views 2006. Image J,Barrett mirrored acrylic