In reviewing the JamFactory Biennial, Margot Osborne considers whether the centre’s stated aims are being achieved.

THE JamFactory Biennial deserves special scrutiny this year as it marks the 30th year of the JamFactory. Premier Rann is perpetually recalling the golden years of the Dunstan era and the establishment of the Jam Factory is often cited as an achievement of that period. That the organisation has survived this long (despite existing in a chronic state of financial stress) is not in itself sufficient cause for celebration. It has always received the lion’s share of visual arts/craft funding from the State coffers, so the question as to whether JamFactory is a successful survivor is worth asking.

My paradoxical conclusion is that the JamFactory has never been successful at what it was set up to do – namely, to combine provision of on-the-job training with production of commercially viable craft products through teams of trainee practitioners working under the guidance of a master craft practitioner. The model has been flawed from the start and evolution over the years has left in place the problems built into the core of the Jam’s operations.

Driven by the financial necessity of meeting sales targets, truckloads of often mediocre or frankly awful bowls and vases, made under duress by insufficiently skilled trainees who would really prefer to be doing their own one-off work, have been distributed to gift shops around the country. Even so, the books never seem to balance. A succession of administrators have fled to saner employment, unable to stand the stress of overdue accounts.

Workshop Heads (now called Creative Directors) have rapidly burnt out and left in frustration at the lack of time for their own professional development while they chased the dollars of corporate commissions. Trainees (now called Design Associates) often finish their two-year term demoralised and frustrated at the difficulty of balancing professional creative development with constant pressure to contribute to the Jam’s revenue. Yet it is a tradition to ignore these problems and attribute them to jaded ex-employees. It is also a tradition for management to put up a fire-wall between the Board and any morale problems in-house.

The Jam’s successes, and these are substantial, are an almost accidental bi-product of its professed core business as an on-the-job training institution. It is the fluid interconnection with the wider South Australian professional field through the Jam’s access facilities, rental studios, retail/wholesale operations and exhibitions that are the essence of its success and its importance to the State.

Front-of-house operations, namely the shop and gallery, are a raging success and a popular destination for South Australians and tourists alike. Neither rely on output from the Jam’s design studios, although Purple Space exhibitions frequently showcase current and recent design associates. The shop and gallery are mutually supportive in attracting visitation levels that are rivalled only by the big North Terrace institutions.

Behind the scenes, the Jam’s four design studios generate a high-energy creative environment, especially in the glass studios, where professional glass-blowers as well as the Jam’s official inmates use the facilities from early until late. In the independent rental studios upstairs, emerging designer-makers who have recently finished their training programs add to the feeling of a place teeming with creative activity.

Many trainees and studio heads have vanished without trace interstate or overseas but others have stayed to work here, for shorter or longer periods. Gradually over the years they have formed the core of a flourishing semi-permanent SA craft community that includes a disproportionate number of outstanding artists and designers with national and increasingly international profiles.

The irony for the JamFactory is that individual one-off work and experimental research that happens under its roof, often out of hours and only indirectly subsidised (compared to the substantial running costs of the core Training program), are its real creative strength. The downside is that so much subsidy, administrative overheads and corporate attention are devoted to keeping the wheels on a faulty model, instead of further developing its inherent potential as an innovative R&D facility at the nexus of craft and design.

The JamFactory Biennial showcases some of this one-off independent work by the Jam’s studio heads and the current crop of design associates, as opposed to the corporate gifts, trophies or bread-and-butter wholesale lines that take up much of their time. In the final balance, the Biennial is vindication of the creative importance of JamFactory. It offers abundant evidence of potential among design associates, many of whom have come to the Jam after graduating from the SA School of Art.

Honor Freeman’s Tupperware series in delicate pastel shades wittily plays on the incongruity of fine porcelain masquerading as plastic. Complex decals by Tracey Rosser are very new-millennium in their digital patterning, though I wish she would develop more interesting blanks as a vehicle for her decoration. Luke Mount is outstanding among the glass associates. His gorgeous Rough Diamond bottle in acid green with an exquisite tapering stopper is reminiscent of his namesake Nick Mount, though they are apparently not related.

Sim Luttin’s jewellery features appealing abstract organic patterns in silver and mild steel. However jewellers Katrina Freene and Kath Inglis, whose work is generally fresh and innovative, do not seem to have found the right vehicles for the Biennial. Freene’s earrings are disappointingly humdrum despite her overly serious statement in the catalogue that this work is about the “representation of the female within popular culture”. Inglis’s fan-shaped wall piece may have subtleties that eluded me, but appeared like an experiment that did not quite come off.

Among furniture associates, Anna-Claire Petre’s elegantly balanced plywood and steel stools stand out from the pack, though I could not test them to see if they were actually functional as well as good-looking. Similarly, Jim Hannon-Tan’s veneered plywood furniture looks beautiful as sculpture but may not stand up to usage.

Exhibits by JamFactory’s staff, including Creative Directors and technical managers, are strong overall. Eclipsing all others in its sheer presence, Deb Jones’s cast lead crystal form has pellucid depths and limpid shifts in tone. In contrast, her colleague Tom Moore indulges in his trademark quirky humour as a foil for technical dexterity. Metal Studio head Sue Lorraine reveals a new direction, leaving behind for the moment her museum of internal organs to move into the realm of natural history museums with a cleverly conceived Vitrine, from which flutter “moth-eaten moth” brooches in mild steel.