This blog will be an online diary of my proposed tripto South Korea to visit the International Craft Biennial which is held in the city of Cheongju. This is the fifth biennial that the country has held and is a showcase for contemporary Korean craft as well as exhibiting work from international visitors. You can visit their website on http://www.okcj.org/.



Being a busy period at work - we have a stand at the Crafts Council's London Craft Fair, Origin - I've not got much beyond booking the flight as the process of extracting any information for visitors from the website and any contacts has been somewhat frustrating. However, at this year's Origin there have been four Korean exhibitors and it has been interesting to talk to them - the glassmaker Yesung Kim who studied here at the Royal College of Art has been very helpful and I have had recommendations for galleries, museums and interesting areas to visit in Seoul as well. Yesung also has a friend at the Korean Crafts Council so I will also try and meet up with her if there is time - and I manage to find the building!

I am trusting to my guidebook to find somewhere to stay on the first two nights - I feel reassured that the metro and train stations have place names in English although less reassured by the comments that there are few street names or numbers. There is one area where there are traditional houses which you can stay in and are affordable so wish me luck to find these.



The theme of the biennial is 'Deeply and Slowly' which is something of an unintentional double-entendre but I am sure will be interpreted with serious intent. I shall expect to battle against hordes of school children - which Julian Stair warned me and I look forward to finding some new makers for future programming for ourselves and to share with others.

If you are in London, the Korean potter Hyejeong Kim has an exhibition at the Craft Potters Association and from the pieces that I saw during installation, it promises to be really strong. It runs until the 20th October.

I can also thank the Arts Council who have awarded me a grant towards the visit. I plan to add photographs to this site so that you can see the exhibition and interesting work and for anyone in the West Midlands, give a future presentation for the Designer Maker West Midlands Forum. You can also email me at andynhorn@hotmail.com.

Hopefully my next update will be from Seoul - I will arrive there on Tuesday and depart the following Monday morning. Wish me a safe flight!

Andy
posted Friday 12th October