Raising the Bar and Weaving Influences is reviewed on behalf of craftscotland by Caroline Ednie.

Raising the Bar and Weaving Influences, the double-header showcase currently featuring in Edinburgh, is also something of a double-header milestone. For not only are they the inaugural presentations in a new and exciting craft based exhibition space - the recently renovated and re-imagined Dovecot Studios. But they are also the brainchild of fledgling craft initiative IC: Innovative Craft, an experienced - and timely - collective that aims to highlight and celebrate contemporary craft in Scotland, and crucially ‘get it out there’ into the international arena - where it belongs.

The new Dovecot Studios is a sensitive reinvention of the former Infirmary Street Baths by Edinburgh based Malcolm Fraser Architects, and features the new Dovecot Tapestry Studio, as well as a pitch-perfect dual exhibition space. It has clearly laid out its stall as a ‘contemporary art, craft and design’ space, and in doing so has placed craft within a wider cultural context. This must be music to the ears of many contemporary craft practitioners who often have to present their work in more marginalized surroundings.

And by way of a canny statement of intent for the Dovecot’s future exhibition programme, Raising the Bar: Influential Voices in Metal includes a wide range of work, in most part true to its craft roots, yet with many pieces also straddling art, sculpture and even product design.  Featuring twelve international makers, who have been brought together for the first time, it’s a heady mix of form, function and execution.

This melting pot of metalwork features Malcolm Appleby’s engraved silver platter ‘Hurricane George’, which is large on romance and poetry. By way of a contrast Myra Mimlitsch-Gray’s pieces playfully pervert traditional notions of metalwork with their ‘weirding-out’ of familiar forms.  Tore Svensson’s hand chased Bowl in iron and gilt also deserves special mention for its raw primitive edge, which sits nobly within the craft tradition. 

Elsewhere, Robert Foster’s hand hammered stainless steel coffee and tea pots would not be out of place sitting alongside the sensual product designs of Arne Jacobsen or Philippe Starck. And Michael Rowe’s remarkable ‘Pre-genus’ series pushes the boundaries even further, appearing to embrace silver and metalwork but also design and even architectural theory.

Special mention should be made of the exhibition display, where the works are arranged over a series of bleached blonde wooden trestle tables.  This spare and sparse presentation has the effect of creating a more solid - and stolid - platform for the hand crafted objects, offering a simpler and more appropriate solution than the usual display opportunities of a rarefied environment of fine art display cases. 

Let us not forget, however, that The Dovecot is also about taking the city’s distinguished tapestry tradition into the 21st century.  And by way of acknowledgement of this fact ‘Weaving Influences’, which looks at the role different artists and designers have played in the life of the Dovecot Studios in the post-war period, presents itself as the second strand of the exhibition showcase.  Sculptors, painters and printmakers: amongst them Ian Hamilton Finlay, David Hockney, Eduardo Paolozzi and Edward Bawden, have all worked with Dovecot weavers to create unique tapestries, and these works provide an exuberantly colourful counterpoint to the muted metallic tones of Raising the Bar next door.

The tapestries are presented alongside their artwork influences, which is particularly effective.  Treats are the wonderful pattern based designs of Robert Stewart’s ‘Genesis’ (1970); Paolozzi’s Pearson Tapestry (1996); and Sax Shaw’s ‘Cycle of Life’ (1958), which recalls the 17th Century ‘Still Life’ painting tradition.

The Dovecot’s rich tapestry tradition is writ large here, and with the new purpose built premises, their future will surely be shade-wearingly bright.  Indeed a major exhibition, celebrating the Dovecot’s centenary, is currently being planned for 2012.  In the meantime by way of anticipation for the main event ‘Weaving Influences’ is a great taster as well as a worthy way to herald in a new era.

The exhibitions are on from 4 August to 27 September 2008 at the Dovecot Studios, 10 Infirmary Street, Edinburgh.  Find out more at www.innovativecraft.co.uk and www.dovecotstudios.com