Swords into Ploughshares: Knives into Jewels at The Glasgow School of Art.

The Scotsman

NEW EXHIBITION : Swords into Ploughshares: Knives into Jewels at The Glasgow School of Art.  Reid Building, 164 Renfrew St, Glasgow G3 6RQ  Unique and important touring exhibition examines the urgent issue of knife crime in the UK.  This will be the only opportunity to see this exhibition in Scotland.  The work of 30 international jewellery and metals artists will be on display, including Professor Stephen Bottomley, Head of School of Design and Anna Gordon, Head of Silversmith & Jewellery at GSA.

Transcript

00:00My name is David Alexander and I'm in the Reid Gallery at Glasgow School of Art

00:06for the opening of Swords into Ploughshares, Knives into Jewels, which is an exhibition

00:11of work made by jewelers and metalsmiths from around the world, which has been made from

00:18knives that have been kind of removed from circulation from knife crime basically,

00:24so we're looking at kind of issues around that.

00:26It started really in 2017. I had been involved with an artist called Boris Bally who'd invited

00:33me to take a gun and create a piece based on a gun that had been removed from circulation

00:43and so I then kind of worked with him on that and he came to a conference and spoke about

00:52the project of that and afterwards in conversation with him, with Norman, my co-curator,

00:59he suggested that we do something similar here around knife crime and it came out of the

01:04conversation and that was really the genesis of it and the piece by Boris, because we'd invited

01:11him back, the piece that he made for the show is actually in the show just now and we've also got

01:18lots of other work by other artists as well. So I'm Norman Cherry, I'm the co-curator of the

01:23exhibition and David and I between us have I think quite an extensive address book in terms of

01:32jewelers, jewellery artists, metal workers, really right across the world and we put together

01:40a kind of draft list first of all. The important thing for us was that there would be artists who

01:47are committed to the subject and to the theme of the exhibition but also what we wanted to do was

01:55to have a nice mixture of people who are let's call them established artists, some of whom you

02:02would actually describe as the international superstars of the field, people who are mid-career

02:08who are established and known but we also wanted some early career people as well, you know, some

02:16who are maybe within five to ten years of graduating, beginning perhaps to make a name for

02:22themselves or people who show lots of promise that we thought would really make a great contribution

02:29to this show and would also in themselves benefit from it. Well the wide range of approaches is very

02:35much the consequence of the people we selected, we kind of selected them because we knew we would

02:42get quite a wide range so we have people from North America, from Europe, from Australia

02:49as well as a big core if you like from the UK and Ireland. All of them we knew either have

02:59experience in their own cultures of knife crime and they know what it does and the plague that

03:07it is on society. Others it's foreign to them but they're intrigued by it and concerned by it and

03:17felt that they could make a contribution because one of the things also we, I mean David and I,

03:23we talk about craftivism or arts activism, you know, in other words it's the power of the arts

03:32to make a difference, right. Now we know that this project isn't the answer but it's an answer, it's

03:39one of many, it has its part to play and we all believe very strongly in the power of what we do,

03:47soft power if you like, not hard power but power to change people's lives, to change people's

03:54perceptions and also from the point of view of the artists to actually maybe have an opportunity

04:00to be involved in a project that perhaps changes their attitudes or approaches and, you know, for

04:08example one of our artists, Eimear Conyard, who's based in Ireland, she really felt that she had

04:17been transformed and her approach to work had been transformed. She learned a lot of new stuff

04:23technically, she got involved in what we call Damascus Steel and felt that this professionally

04:32as well as ethically had opened up a whole new world to her and that was really exciting to

04:37see and to learn about it when people tell you these things and explain what the project has

04:44meant to them.

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