Precious Reclaiming Art and Craft

Precious Reclaiming Art and Craft Hove Museum & Art Gallery 30 January to 23 May 2010
Hove Museum & Art Gallery commissioned ten artists and makers to create new pieces, and nine to exhibit existing work. Precious is the result, produced from objects which have had a previous life. I went to the Precious exhibition at Hove Museum last week . Big mistake. Or rather the mistake was not phoning to find out if there were any school parties also going. There was one school party of 60 children and another of about 40 plus several groups of adult learners. So Hove Museum was busier than Oxford Street. Fortunately, the schools were in groups and I managed to see some of the exhibits in relative peace and quiet. The exhibition is wonderful. Many different artists have made sculptures out of everyday reclaimed objects. Some witty, clever, painstakingly made pieces, some that were breathtakingly beautiful. A plinth of 4000 pennies, computer speakers painted in a willow pattern style, dresses made out of commercial dressmaker paper patterns, fabric made out of stitched paper and made into dresses. Taxidermy cases filled with paper flowers made out of cereal boxes and moths made out of spectacles. And my favourite, thousands of paper holes treaded on invisible thread to give a dreamlike, cascading, draping cobweb effect.