Create/Elevate exhibition at Harewood House explores the power of craft through new work by contemporary artists
The latest exhibition at Harewood House, Create/Elevate, is a far-reaching show featuring the work of internationally-renowned artists that celebrates craft and its importance in creating connections, bringing people together and building communities around the world.
Presenting significant, large-scale works from 16 contemporary artists, designers and craft collectives from across the globe throughout the House and Gardens at Harewood, Create/Elevate explores the power of craft through three interrelated themes. New Narratives showcases artworks that interrogate Harewood’s collections and history, The Use of Land explores local and global ecologies, and Nourish highlights the positive social effects of sharing food and knowledge.
“It is really exciting to see all these acclaimed artists responding in different ways to Harewood – the house and gardens and its complex history,” says Darren Pih, former artistic director at Harewood who co-curated the exhibition with independent curator Ligaya Salazer. “I think it is an uplifting exhibition too, presenting craft as a continuum – alongside the expertly crafted objects in the house, and also within the fabric of the building.”
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Craft is very much rooted in the art and heritage of Harewood House and the exhibition aims to reveal some of those histories and to provide the opportunity to inspire new stories. One of the four new commissions included in the show, Layered Legacies, a handcrafted hand block wallpaper installation by multi-disciplinary artist Mani Kambo, is a perfect example. “While Mani was doing some research, she got really close up to the ceilings at Harewood and she could see fingerprints on it, marks made by the original people working on it,” says Pih. “The stories of those unknown artisans have become lost over time.” Kambo’s installation is also inspired by the works of Armenian ceramicist David Ohannessian, several of his pieces are in the Harewood collection. “Ohannessian fled Armenia after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and ended up in Jerusalem where in the early 1920s he founded a hugely influential ceramics workshop. All this work in English country houses, once you begin to interrogate it, it becomes a global story.”
The three other new commissions featured in the exhibition are London-based design studio Arabeschi Di Latte’s installation Social Kitchen, created with Leeds ceramicist Jo Woffinden, which explores the traditions of sharing dishes; British-born Ghanaian designer Kusheda Mensah’s installation Onipa ye de presents an alternative library that creates a space for the transfer of new knowledge, and London-based Venezuelan artist Lucia Pizzani’s sculptural installation Cultivo y Memoria (Crop and Memory) in the walled vegetable garden explores ideas around spirituality in the plant world. Pizzani worked with Harewood’s head gardener Trevor Nicholson to create the piece which is made from ceramic sculptures, live plants and fallen tree fragments from the Harewood estate.
Also in the outdoors is a major installation, Conditions at Present, by Preston-based artist Rebecca Chesney. “There is a real activist quality to Rebecca’s work,” says Pih. “She has created an installation of 25 windsocks that have been crafted out of tent fabric salvaged from music festivals.” Chesney has been working with a charity that redistributes abandoned tents left at festivals to areas of need around the world when people have been displaced either due to natural disasters such as flooding or famine, or conflict. “Rebecca was shocked at the amount of tent waste,” says Pih. “It is a dramatic installation in the landscape, very striking and immediate which conveys a really serious message about climate change and the impact on the environment of human activity.”
One of the larger installations within the House is Dhaka-based artist collective Britto Arts Trust’s collaborative work Rasad which presents a full-scale representation of a small-town Bangladeshi street market filled with handcrafted objects made from metal, ceramic, embroidery, fabric, natural spices and seeds. The piece explores the politics of food – the connections between the global food trade, the legacy of colonialism and ongoing economic exploitation.
“What Ligaya and I were keen to ensure is that the contemporary installations and artworks don’t take over but rather are in sympathy with or in dialogue with the House and gardens,” says Pih, who is now Head of Exhibitions and Collections at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester. “The aim is that visitors are still able to appreciate the beautiful interiors, furniture and objects while at the same time the contemporary works can bring new knowledge and a new way for people to engage with the history of Harewood. I think that is a collective responsibility for the heritage sector – in order to remain relevant to all audiences, you have to confront that complex history. While there are some important messages in the works on display, there is a lovely playfulness to many of them and the whole show is very uplifting and accessible.”
Harewood Biennial 2024: Create/Elevate runs at Harewood House until October 20. harewood.org