Craft of Convalescence

Craft of Convalescence brings together a selection of new work by contemporary jeweller and maker Rachael Colley and dancer Inari Hulkkonen. Invited to respond to the online resource ‘Index of Convalescence’ by curators Laura Mansfield and Swen Steinhäuser, Colley and Hulkkonen explore the gestures of craft as a practice of convalescence in experiences of (chronic) illness, disability and grief. Collaborating across sculpture and dance, the artists interrogate processes of object-making and handling as sequences of action and gesture that connect the body to a given material, envelope it in task-based action, and ground it in the time of the present. Akin to the repetitive, task-based rituals of physical and emotional rehabilitation, these sequences of controlled and concentrated movement are saturated with the attentive calm of the drift of convalescence.