Tailor-made experts featured in exhibition

Anna Miles with one of the exhibits in Bespoke. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

It's a bit of work to get them out of their workrooms," laughs curator Anna Miles as she thinks about the range of obsessive makers featured in the Bespoke exhibition.

Miles, who runs her own gallery on High St, was invited by Objectspace to put together a follow-up to last year's Talking About exhibition. That featured different handmade objects supplied and discussed by writers.

"It was a very interesting show but it didn't, perhaps, create much of a conversation between them [the objects]," she says.

This year's exhibition is equally diverse, featuring a surfboard, a restored keyboard, embroidery and cheese. But this curious mix of objects has been gathered to demonstrate the different ways we think about handmade objects in contemporary society.

One item is a vintage Persian rug, awaiting restoration because a large chunk was hacked out of it, seemingly to accommodate a mantelpiece.

"It's a very vivid thing to look at," says Miles. "It really makes you think about the role objects have and how vulnerable they are."

Although the term is now used for custom software design, bespoke is traditionally associated with tailor-made clothing - the result of a unique relationship between client and maker.

"There is something very valuable about things made by an individual for an individual," says Miles, referring to a New Yorker article titled "A single person making a single thing."

"It's a very interesting mode of production and consumption."

The people in Bespoke are an idiosyncratic bunch with an obsessive approach that has resulted in their becoming experts in their fields.

New Zealand surf guru Wayne Parkes has been making surfboards since 1964 and his work is internationally respected.

"You can fit the board to the person," says Parkes of the way he judges his clients' requirements, assessing not only size, skill and surfing style, but also a more holistic reading of personality. Intriguingly, although his boards almost exclusively feature a no-fuss white finish, the example he gave Miles is vivid red.

For makers with such exacting standards, it can be difficult to know how much time to invest in an object. Producing 150-200 boards a year, Parkes usually knows when he is finished, although he admits it is easy to get carried away on his own boards.

"You could keep working on [them] forever," he says. "It just depends on how far you want to go with it. You can whittle them away to nothing, like the one in the show - I started that one years ago."

Miles, who also teaches at AUT, says education and training are aspects of the exhibition that fascinated her most.

"It intrigues me, the fact that only about four people in this show have had any tertiary education directly related to their making. And I think the fact they have these amazing standards has to do with this obsessive approach. But also, they don't really have anyone else's standards in mind.

"They don't know what a degree standard or a master's standard is. Their standards are infinite. They have incredibly particular goals and they are always trying to refine them."

One of the most remarkable self-taught talents in the exhibition is Alwynne Crowsen, who has been making lace since the late 1960s. She established New Zealand's first lace-makers' guild in 1970, five years before the English equivalent.

"I think what started it all off was an article in a magazine, which said you couldn't teach yourself to make lace," she says. "I rather like challenges."

Crowsen proved the experts wrong and mastered the lace-making styles of many different cultures.

"I am very interested in the different techniques that have come forward. They are still discovering new techniques. Last year we got a book in the guild library about Austrian lace, which is a little bit different again. And then, when the Berlin Wall came down, there was a great influx of Russian peasants coming forward."

Crowsen has since taught many people around New Zealand and has witnessed pockets of lacemaking activity blossom.

It is this preservation and continuation of traditions that is most important for her and she seldom gives her work away. Instead, she labels and wraps it, then stores it in filing cabinets that contain an impressive collection of her take on the world's lacemaking traditions.

"The key thing about the exhibition is the fascinating expertise it uncovers," says Miles. "It's been an amazing exhibition to work on.

"The makers are impressive and inspiring. Their dedication to what they do and their thoughtfulness about other people is displayed in the objects they make, the relationships they form and their willingness to pass on their knowledge."

* What: Bespoke: the pervasiveness of the handmade

* Where and when: Objectspace, 8 Ponsonby Rd, to June 10

* Curator talk: Anna Miles talks with and about the makers, 11am, June 10