CRAFT MONTH NI

Various Artists, various Venues throughout Northern Ireland Until Aug 31 www.craftnidirectory.org 048-90323059

August is Craft Month in Northern Ireland, and this year the focus of this annual event is on ceramics. Ceramics as an art form received a boost in 2003, when transvestite potter Grayson Perry won the Turner Prize, remarking, as he accepted the award in a pink silk dress, “I think the art world had more trouble coming to terms with me being a potter than my choice of frocks”.

Works on show, from Helen Moore's Material Morphology at the Naughton Gallery at Queens, to Frances Lambe's Microcosmosat the Millennium Court in Portadown, blur the art/craft divide, while those interested in making and doing as well as just looking can attend workshops on ceramics and many other craft practices.

Craft in Ireland (North and South) has often been seen to be caught between tradition and innovation, but at the top level new directions are creating a fascinating marriage of the two.

Above: Barnaby Barford’s, Shit! Now I’m Going to Be Really Late (2006). Part of Our Objects: Contemporary Ceramics in Context at Hillsborough, Co Down

Can't see that? Catch this:

Bubble, Science Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin