Make Your Movements: Korean Contemporary Objects, A New Approach

The Korea Craft and Design Foundation with the Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK) present Make Your Movements: Korean Contemporary Objects, A New Approach (1 August - 17 September 2016), an exhibition curated to showcase a new phase in Korean craft, each influenced by the concept of ‘movement’.

The exhibition at the KCCUK brings together 19 designers, makers and craftsmen from Korea whose collections range from 3D printed accessories and furniture to jewellery and ceramics. Curated by Kyoungrin Park, the show explores the theory of movement in craft, taking as a starting point the way craftsmen move during their creative work, and how a completed object leaves the hands of its maker imbued with their manual knowledge; it then travels to an exhibition hall, an art gallery or a store, therefore generating another movement.

Kyoungrin Park comments: “When we planned this exhibition we discussed the word ‘movement’. The primary meaning of ‘movement’ knows no immediate distinction in the East and the West. The definition of ‘movement’ in a Korean dictionary would state: ‘a change of a static posture or position or a change of a posture or a position.’ An English dictionary states: ‘movement involves changing position or going from one place to another’. The exhibition uses as its starting point the semantic layers hidden in this single word.” Park developed the curatorial statement to encompass eight key concepts:

1. Craftsmen design and make objects with their own hands.
2. Hand-made objects are imbued with their makers’ thoughts and physical
knowledge.
3. Objects generate movements around them in their users and observers.
4. Objects have a performative quality: they command, and control such movements.
5. Crafts can be considered as a physical record and as receptacle of control and
order.

‘Make Your Movements: Korean Contemporary Objects, A New Approach’ is an exhibition developed also as medium to communicate Korean culture to a different audience. To further contextualise the objects on display, Park was mindful to extend her curatorial vision to:

6. Objects made by craftsmen pursuing specificity instead of universality.
7. Objects contain their makers’ knowledge, and consequently Korean culture is
embedded in them
8. When objects representative of a cultural context are displayed in a different
culture, they become a communication tool.

In selecting the designers and their work for the exhibition, Park gives an overview of Korean crafts spanning both the traditional and the innovative, showcasing contextual methods and techniques that reflect both the changes in Korean culture and the idiosyncrasies of centuries old crafts solutions adapted to today’s society.

From lacquered metal trays that double up as hanging pictures, to 3D printed objects that are highly manipulated by hand, ceramics taken to unprecedented levels of thinness to the point of becoming transparent, and furniture designed specifically for traditional market traders, this exhibition allows western viewers to immerse themselves in a world that is both exotic yet familiar, and invites them to interact with the physical qualities of the objects to appreciate their inner essence, in a near-performative exchange.