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.
Comments