The South Project is a unique multiyear program developed by Craft Victoria that saw the bringing together of the cultures of the Southern Hemisphere in The Gathering held in 2004. The South Project website gives a detailed overview of the activities that are in the offering, with the New Zealand Gathering this month, and the highlight exhibition in Melbourne in 2006. What has driven the development of this dynamic program? Craft Australia's General Manager, Catrina Vignando, conducted the following interview with the instigator of the South Project, Kevin Murray, the Executive Director of Craft Victoria to bring you a personal glimpse of this multifaceted event.

CV   What inspired you to develop the South Project?

KM   I wouldn't pin the South Project down to any individual inspiration. It was bound to happen sooner or later. The trigger was the post-mortem on the 1999 Melbourne International Biennial. The question was raised about how the role a city like Melbourne plays in the international arts calendar. While a glamorous ideal, the biennale paradigm didn't seem viable for Melbourne. Simply put, Sydney got there first and there was room for only one biennale in Australia. The conversation eventually petered out and attention in the visual arts was quickly diverted to building developments such as Federation Square and ACCA. So this seemed an opportunity for contemporary craft to continue the conversation to its logical conclusion and consider the kind of regional focus that might be appropriate for a southern city of a southern nation. Fortunately, this opportunity arose during an expansionary period with the Visual Arts Craft Strategy and the Commonwealth Games. The VACB's Craft Leadership Program was also critical in enabling the development of the initial network on which the current project rests. With critical intervention of the Myer Foundation, particularly through Rupert Myer, we were able to initiate the South Project and hopefully provide the craft sector with a future international event where craft can side alongside the other visual arts.

CV   Can you describe some of the highlights of the program that have had a personal impact for you?

KM   Meeting makers and writers in other southern countries has been a revelation. They are like lost cousins. Their issues are so similar. But because we are always looking north, there is little chance to establish dialogue. It was particularly moving to find craft playing an important political role.

I remember the sculpture department at Natal Technikon in Durban as a particularly vibrant place. The facilities were terrible and there was no office to mediate my visit. But artists were quite hospitable and startled me with the intense nature of their work. The Shembe ceramicist Sthembiso Shangase was making a vessel dense with narrative about the different religions of South Africa. Nathi Khanyili was commissioning Zulu basket-makers to contribute to his sculptural installation. And Langa Magwa was creating an object that brought together the different races of Durban through the symbol of the horn. As the first wave of blacks hitting the art school after apartheid, these artists seemed engaged with a cultural alchemy seeking to bind together the fragments of their nation. It was hard, difficult, unrewarding in the short term, but inspiring in the faith that art contained the potential to heal a nation.

But that was an individual highlight, yet to realise itself in a public event. A more satisfying highlight has been able to share this promise of the south with other people at the South 1 gathering in Melbourne last year. There was a sense of immense cultural difference-in colour, history, economy, class and religion. Some of the presentations were in three different languages. Yet, despite this Tower of Babel, there was a palpable sense of common destiny. It wasn't the discovery of a common set of values necessarily, but a shared challenge to develop dialogue where no-one had existed before. With South 1, it felt that the project had passed a critical test and forged a network that will continue of its own momentum. It created the formidable team with Magdalena Moreno and Nicki Harvey who have pushed the project into new realms this year.

CV   What are some key features of the South Project we can look forward to over the next couple of years?

KM   The residencies will certainly continue, providing further opportunities for cross-fertilisation. But as a conduit for cultural exchange, the project should be able itself to generate new conversations. One area that seems rich in potential is the application of dance to craft. To a broad audience, the greatest cultural attractions of the south include dance, particularly tango and samba. The dances of the south have a common African rhythm. An interesting challenge is to tap into that energy through the production of objects. There are some fragmentary attempts, here and there. But one of the advantages of the kind of network that we are evolving is to bring people together who can work on a shared challenge.

More generally, the South Project has brought up a number of thorny issues about the relationship between craft and design. There are an incredible number of initiatives now by designers to commission work from artisans. It's even happening in Australia, with Spanish designers coming here to have work made by local craftspersons. How should the makers be rewarded-by the hour or by commission? If authenticity is important to the work's marketability, what guarantee is there that makers authorise the designs? There's a real place now for dialogue around these international craft-design partnerships. This can help build interest and confidence in the new markets for these goods.

CV   How will the South Project evolve in 2006?

KM   Next year will begin with the Common Goods, our exhibition for the Commonwealth Games, which includes craft practitioners from eight southern countries who will be taking residencies in Victoria. The idea underpinning their work is a Gandhian understanding of humanity that has been very important in nation-building and reconciliation throughout the south. They will use their craft skills to make meaningful cultural interventions. Later in the year, the focus will be in Santiago where we hope to test out the potential conversation between South American and Australian craft. 2006 will be a year of craft exchange with the south.

CV   What are some significant differences/similarities between arts practice in Australia and other countries in the South Project?

KM   What immediately distinguishes Australia from other countries is the strength of contemporary craft. Though to us, the place of craft in state galleries might seem tenuous, in other countries it is not even a possibility. Craft elsewhere is still something considered to be sold only in museums or shops. Politically, it is very important for these new democracies to elevate craft as a part of their public culture. Yet they don't have the infrastructure that we have. On the other hand, their craft is much more grounded in culture than ours. It is very much a collective enterprise involving traditions that are passed down through families living in specific areas. There's much to exchange here. Note that the headquarters for the World Crafts Council is now in Santiago, Chile. This is a wonderful opportunity to work with countries like Chile to translate their incredibly strong and rich craft traditions into a contemporary idiom.

CV   How is craft practice positioned in the Southern Hemisphere?

KM   Craft is at a very important point in the development of many southern countries. In the past, there has been a tendency to preserve traditional crafts as fixed elements in a nation's culture-by contrast with sometimes 'fluid' political environment. But now as popular democracy has taken hold, governments are particularly interested in programs of 'upliftment' that provide opportunities for advancement among previously disadvantaged peoples. In some cases, this means adapting traditional crafts to the needs of new markets among the growing urban middle classes. As well as economic benefits, there is much creative potential in the clash between traditional and modern values. This of course provided the basis for the wonderful explosion of 'magical realism' in literature with writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. While this genre has subsided of late, its role in the visual arts and crafts is growing in strength.

CV   Have you identified an aesthetic of the South emerging from the programs you have evolved to date?

KM   That would be hard. There are some underlying themes. The role of artist collectives has been strong, but that doesn't yet relate to the craft sector. In South Africa, there is a strong modernist influence in the adaptation of traditional techniques to geometrical designs. By contrast, the craft work from South American countries, particularly Brazil, is often quite baroque in its fantastic themes. Like the Tiwi ceramics in Australia, there is great fascination in hybrid creatures from mythology, like the frog-bull that is found in some Brazilian ceramics. This has an interesting reflection in some contemporary craft that mixes traditional with modern capitalist, like Nadine Ospina's pre-Columbian ceramics with Mickey Mouse gods. This kind of work exercises a cultural alchemy that reflects the changes that are happening in the south. So while it is too early to cast judgment, we could see a contrast with the spiritual emphasis on technique that has come to us from the Japanese craft ethic. Craft on the other side of the world tends to be more syncretic, expressing cultural dialogue rather than intense individual focus. But like most hasty generalisations, this deserves to be knocked down.

CV   Do you see a North/South dichotomy developing? Will you bring a global dialogue/exchanges/debate to the South Project?

KM   There's a real temptation to play south as victim suffering the exploitation of the north. While there's undoubtedly historical substance in this, it can lead to an identity which rests only on the common enemy. It seems just as important to understanding the differences within south as against the north. An alternative is to see north and south as part of a common dialectic, where you can't have one without the other. For instance, you can get to some interesting places seeing it anthropomorphically: north is the head and south is the body. For any northern culture, there is a southern dimension that reflects the more physical element of life, such as the South Pacific for French painters. Alternatively, the north provides many southern nations with an opportunity to develop more formal theoretical structures, such as the evolution of post-colonial theory through expatriates in London. Despite this reciprocity, there is a tendency in our technologically-mediated world to distance ourselves from physical destiny. It is through the critical mechanism of dialectic that we can develop open debate as part of the South Project.

Just as a postscript, I had an interesting phone conversation today with a South African artist quizzing me about the role of post-colonial theory in the South Project. We ended up agreeing that post-colonial theory was necessary, but its circulation tended to be limited to the university. It seemed timely to move on from theory into the active engagement through making. For this kind of engagement, we may be looking more at a renewed humanism-one that has faith in potential for dialogue while admitting inevitability of cultural difference. Let's hope.