The Mount Making Project
About
A project exploring object making and object support in Aotearoa NZ, led by mount maker and artist Sophia Smolenski in collaboration with 22 artists from around Aotearoa. Made possible with the help from Creative New Zealand.
The Artists
Background
Exhibition
Home
Background
What is mount making?
Mount-making is a common practice within museums and art galleries to hold objects; but mounts themselves are almost invisible by their very nature. The goal of a mount-maker is to create an apparatus to support, almost cradle, the object on display that does neither distracts from the object or compromises its structural integrity.
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What I’ve found is that responding to the object in front of me and creating a mount to fit it perfectly is an intimate process between mount-maker and object. But I see mount-making as more than just a technical challenge. It has become part of my creative practice and I’m really interested in exploring that process alongside 22 other makers by reversing the “usual” process of responding to an object in front of me. Rather the artists involved will be responding to the mount in front of them. I wanted to see what happens when I make mounts for objects, ideas or even feelings that are uniquely personal to me and how that translates to the artists’ own work.
The overarching title for this mount making project ‘Offering It Up’ refers to this strange phrase that mount makers say that has been passed onto me. Offering a mount up to the object is a way of seeing if the object will accept the mount, and vice versa, we say offering an object up to the mount is a way of seeing if the mount will accept the object. It is a phrase that is equally interchangeable when referring to either the object or mount.
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Mount-making is a common practice within museums and art galleries to hold objects; but mounts themselves are almost invisible by their very nature. The goal of a mount-maker is to create an apparatus to support, almost cradle, the object on display that does neither distracts from the object or compromises its structural integrity.
What I’ve found is that responding to the object in front of me and creating a mount to fit it perfectly is an intimate process between mount-maker and object. But I see mount-making as more than just a technical challenge. It has become part of my creative practice and I’m really interested in exploring that process alongside 22 other makers by reversing the “usual” process of responding to an object in front of me. Rather the artists involved will be responding to the mount in front of them. I wanted to see what happens when I make mounts for objects, ideas or even feelings that are uniquely personal to me and how that translates to the artists’ own work.
The overarching title for this mount making project ‘Offering It Up’ refers to this strange phrase that mount makers say that has been passed onto me. Offering a mount up to the object is a way of seeing if the object will accept the mount, and vice versa, we say offering an object up to the mount is a way of seeing if the mount will accept the object. It is a phrase that is equally interchangeable when referring to either the object or mount.
