Gone Fishing

Fishing, once a necessity, has transformed into a popular sport with ‘catch-and-release’ as the norm. Attitudes towards it parallel the diminishing world of specialist crafts facing extinction in the UK. Both are outcomes of changing trends over time. There is now an overwhelming range of fishing equipment available, making it difficult to distinguish what is meant for catching fish and what ironically just attracts fishermen. ‘Gone Fishing’ is a series of fishing tools made using techniques from four endangered crafts; maille making, wooden fishnet making, fabric pleating and glass-eye making. By packaging endangered crafts into tools, the project draws attention to the fading craftsmanship while creating objects that evoke human-centric ideas of necessity, novelty and longing in the context of modern culture.