Charly van Rest is the recipient of first edition of The Maker achter de Maker Award
The Maker Behind the Maker Award honors creators whose impeccable craftsmanship and supportive collaboration has been indispensable for a visual artist to best materialize their work for the public’s enjoyment. The award is created by Kunstinstituut Melly in collaboration with Mondriaan Fund, the public fund for visual art and cultural heritage in the Netherlands. The award winner receives a cash gift of €5,000.
Candidates to the award were nominated by visual artists through an open call launched in September 2020. The open call defined “craft” as a specialized technique that could vary from handmade labor to knowledge production. More than one-hundred nominations were reviewed and discussed by a jury convened and chaired by Kunstinstituut Melly’s director, Sofia Hernández Chong Cuy.
The jury consisted of Anne Wenzel, visual artist in Rotterdam; Binna Choi, director of Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons in Utrecht; and Rieke Vos, curator at Het Hem in Zaandam. The jury’s discussion focused on whether and how the nominator (an artist, maker) had been able to materialize their ideas into an artwork precisely because of the quality of the craft of, and the quality of the collaboration with the nominee (the other maker, whether an artist or not).
The jury selected Charly van Rest as the awardee of The Maker Behind the Maker Award for his craftsmanship in creating, recording, and editing sound for artist’s projects. Van Rest’s traditional and inventive ways of creating sound—in his Foley studio, with his hands, props, instruments or digital hardware—has helped visual artists expand the sensorial, narrative and visual experience of their artworks. The jury considered his craft in creating sound not only for his technical expertise, but also from being able to listen closely to artists who speak and work with different artistic language.
The jury stated, “We chose to award a person whose craftsmanship of soundscapes for artworks, is as important as his serious regard and deep listening to the ideas of artists. The nominator’s statements, plus the artworks they submitted as supplementary materials, attest to the quality of Van Rest’s craft. These also testify that ‘this maker’ is neither a facilitator nor an assistant. He is a caring creator himself, one who is collaborative, dedicated, and supportive; one who generously shares his experience and long-practiced skills, as well as his knowledge and virtues.”
Van Rest was nominated to The Maker Behind the Maker Award by different artists: Jan Adriaans, Priscila Fernandes, Mirjam Somers, and Mels van Zutphen. They wrote about their experience of working with Van Rest, and about his expertise and their process in crafting original sound for video works and installations, which further materialized their ideas and took their work to a higher level. This first edition of the award thus recognizes sound-making, which is a stand-alone artistic medium, not only as a craft but also a central component for much work in the field of the visual arts.
The open call for the second edition of The Maker Behind the Maker Award will be launched in September 2021.
For press requests or for further information, please contact Jeroen Lavèn via press [at] kunstinstituutmelly.nl.
About The Maker Behind the Maker Award
Created in 2020, the focus of The Maker Behind the Maker Award is unique. It is one of three awards designed, in principle, to simultaneously celebrate not only Kunstinstituut Melly’s 30th anniversary last year, but also the contributions of those who make our cultural ecosystem so vibrant. The winner of The Maker Behind the Maker Award, Charly van Rest, as well as the awardees of the two other awards will be celebrated at a benefit dinner at our institution (date to be determined, considering the pandemic and lockdowns). The award was created by Kunstinstituut Melly in collaboration with Mondriaan Fund.
For this first edition of The Maker Behind the Maker Award, the jury paid attention to new or innovative applications of traditional crafts. They also paid attention to ways in which the nominees’ knowledge and expertise of their given craft furthered the work of a contemporary artist. Because so many nominations were compelling, the jury chose to assess the nominations considering how the collaboration took both the artist and the craftsperson outside of their own comfort zone, instigating a new form of working and thinking for both makers; pushing the boundaries of one or other’s expertise; bringing both makers a step further into their own experimental practice and creative expansion.
Candidates to the award were nominated by visual artists through an open call launched in September 2020. More than one hundred nominations were submitted by December 2020. Artists came to nominate bookbinders, glass blowers, textile experts, ceramicists, fabricators, engineers and designers, as well as fellow visual artists with whom they have collaborated; even project managers whose administrative work and emotional labor were described as crafts essential to the development of an artist’s artistic trajectory. Nominating artists thus approached craft in a variety of ways, expressing the expansiveness of contemporary art, and the experimental, collaborative, and multidisciplinary nature of the field.