Art: Only Human
Authors: G. Yamey
Journal: BMJ (1999)

Human beings are unique among animals in their investigation and celebration of being alive. The approach of a new millennium is forcing us to define ourselves further, to question who we are now and where we are going. Only Human, the Crafts Council's first ever figurative exhibition, brings together 21 international craft makers to pose the question: “How do we feel as human beings at this millennial moment?”

The artists use the body as their reference point, emphasising it as a psychological rather than physical site, a repository for our fears and desires. Their works are usefully divided into three sections, exploring the different ways in which we view our selves. 

In “The Self and Culture” religious icons are fused with media images, and old fashioned crafts are updated by being branded with graffiti. The ceramic artist Michael Lucero dresses an ancient clay pot in a surreal glass hat and completes the modernisation by signing it with a bar code. One long corridor of the gallery is adorned with sequinned temple flags from Haiti. Each has 20 000 sequins, and the technique is preserved by only a handful of artists on this troubled island. We see voodoo spirits in union with Christian saints, a conflict emphasised by the clash of fluorescent colours.

While the ancient world continues to influence our collective psyche, other artists remind us of its tenuous hold in the face of relentless technological growth. How will our cultural identity be shaped by joining a community held together by the shared consumption of television and the world wide web? In Tass Mavrogordato's huge tapestry It's Thicker than Water we are offered a witty vision of ourselves as members of a cartoon Simpson family. Another tapestry is entitled Kill Me on TV, the last words spoken by a man on death row. We aren't told whether his request was granted.

The second section, “The Self and Others,” suggests that part of the human condition is to be misunderstood by people around us. In the wonderful cartoon Factual Conversation, by the renowned Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, two figures play a game of communication. Initially they seem to help each other in their daily lives—one butters the other's bread, sharpens his pencil, and spreads toothpaste on his toothbrush. But this mutual human understanding soon breaks down, leading to false combinations of toothpaste and bread, and ultimately to overwhelming confusion and exhaustion.

Humour and hysteria are also found in Mary Jo Doherty's tiny porcelain figurines, which are easy to mistake for exquisite Meissen or Royal Doulton. But appearances can be deceptive. Look harder and you see Action Man-like figures covering their genitals with flowers and bows, adopting balletic poses, or sitting on giant stiletto shoes. A tease for sure, but perhaps these men are just misunderstood?

The body has been the site of many battles. We have fought to control fertility and ageing, and we continue to declare a drug war when our defences are broken down by disease. In “The Inside Self,” the uplifting finale of radical images, the artists strip the body bare and force us to consider what makes us beautiful, desirable, and alive. Emma Wolfenden crafts astonishing glass forms from simple outlines, such as the arms of a baby, and presents them on a workbench brightly illuminated from below. Like Marcel Duchamp with his infamous Fountain, the upturned urinal he exhibited as art, Mah Rana also takes functional objects and twists their meaning. In Have You ever Dreamt that your Teeth have Fallen Out? a gold wedding ring has been pummelled into a toothless comb that sits on a table beside a hairbrush. Beyond the suggestion of Freudian impotence is the allusion to other losses, of lovers and friends, jobs and possessions, and the tension between desire and domesticity.

The three dimensional bodies by Hazel White extend the battle metaphor. In Defence Mechanism (number 1) aluminium spikes sit menacingly on a woman's spine, both protecting and threatening.

Disabled models, dressed by the fashion designer Alexander McQueen and photographed by Nick Knight, defiantly show the beauty of being different. The enormous photos show them proudly cartwheeling or standing on prosthetic legs in exquisitely crafted outfits. So how do we feel as human beings? From a small back room of the Crafts Council gallery, it is these startling photos that scream an answer: “Sometimes alone, sometimes afraid, but always, proudly, our individual selves.”