Pairings : GROUP EXHIBITION CO-CURATED BY ALICE KETTLE
Special Collections Gallery, Manchester Metropolitan University
The Pairings project was initiated by Alice Kettle and Alex McErlain at Manchester School of Art with the aim of bringing together makers from different craft specialisms. Collaborative creative practice was explored through the pairing of two or three practitioners from different disciplines and institutions, with the intention of producing work for a joint exhibition that would present possible outcomes alongside a documentation of the collaborative journey.
The initial aim had been to form six pairs; in the end, there were eighteen. Individual practitioners were invited to give a brief presentation on their practice, after which they paired up. Participants were encouraged to meet to initiate their collaborations and to document their progress through a blog. There was no specific brief or imposed limitation; the only fixed point was the booking of the Special Collections exhibition space at Manchester Metropolitan University from September to November 2010, eighteen months after the project began.
Pairings placed makers and designers together in pairs or groups of three. Each participant brought a distinct and established practice, which was shared and negotiated with others. The exhibition presented the outcomes of these playful duets and trios—many developed through the exchange of work by post and via email—where differing approaches were combined, juxtaposed, or held in tension.
These cross-fertilisations of voice and material sometimes marked a temporary shift in direction or a testing of unfamiliar skills, while in other cases they had a more lasting impact on individual practices. Central to the project was the courage of the makers in exposing and expanding their working methods, as participants searched for new territories of connection, material convergence, or retreat.
Ismini Samanidou and Sharon Blakey described their experience as ‘like a whirlwind romance: a passionate affair of fleeting encounters and intense assignations’, one that nonetheless ‘revealed a deeply rooted, mutual aesthetic in the impermanence and beauty of the everyday and evidence of the transitory’.
Other participants discovered new possibilities through technology and alternative processes and tools, which they subsequently applied to their own materials and practices. Duncan Ayscough and Heather Belcher identified a ‘shared passion for material, process and words’, describing the collaboration as ‘an opportunity for me to step outside my own, focused practice and to share my discipline whilst obtaining valuable and inspiring insights into a new material’.
Following the initial Pairings exhibition in 2010 at the Special Collections Gallery, Manchester Metropolitan University, a two-day conference, Pairings: Conversations, Collaborations, Materials, was held in 2011. Co-curated by Alice Kettle and Helen Felcey at Manchester School of Art, the conference aimed to make a significant contribution to knowledge around collaborative practice within craft, design, and art contexts.
Pairings subsequently toured six UK venues, culminating at Contemporary Applied Arts, London, in 2013, and was the sole exhibition of the Stroud International Textile Festival in 2012. The wider project encompassed individual initiatives and linked projects involving over forty participants, alongside an international conference hosted by Manchester School of Art.
