Artist video case study: Shane Waltener

Relevant for students of Visual Arts, Design & Technology, Textiles Technology and Textiles & Design

This video case study features UK based artist Shane Waltener, whose work Another World Wide Web (2011) is featured in the Love Lace exhibition.

It has been developed to provide students with invaluable insights into an artist’s practice, where Shane Waltener discusses the following key topics in relation to his art-making:

- Sources of inspiration
- Explanation of the design process undertaken
- The role of collaboration in his art practice
- Collaboration with other art practitioners and some interesting outcomes of this
- How a context for participation with his work is created
- The relationship between materials, scale and space in his work
- How he challenges traditional craft practice
- How a collaborative art-making project such as Knitted & Looped fits into his art practice

The video is illustrated with photos and video of Shane Waltener’s work, highlighting for students the key points discussed and features the collaborative art installation, Knitted and Looped, developed as part of Sydney Design 2011.

Curriculum links:

Visual Arts Stages 4 & 5
The relationship between the artwork and the audience through making installations

Visual Arts Stage 6
Investigate different artists’ practices and the interrelationship between the artist, lace, museum audiences and representations of place.
Supports the understandings of lace from the different interpretive frameworks

Design & Technology Stage 5
The design process and how designers respond to a brief
The ways a change in scale can create a completely new result.
How different materials and techniques have been combined in both traditional and unconventional ways to achieve innovative and creative design solutions
How some artists collaborate together to produce design solutions

Design & Technology Stage 6
Creative approaches to design solutions
How designers and artists from different fields have worked collaboratively

Textiles Technology Stage 5
The contextualisation of lace in contemporary society through new lace work and approaches to making
How traditional and unconventional materials, tools and techniques have been combined.

Textiles & Design Stage 6
How designers have addressed the functional and aesthetic requirements of creating openwork structures.