the absurd basket makes Luis talk
British artist Lewis Prosser describes himself as an “absurdist basket maker,” a title that feels both playful and surprisingly accurate. His oversized willow tree sculptureswearable costumes, monumental heads and performance objects rarely function as baskets in the conventional sense. Instead, they use the basket as a way to ask larger questions about work, site, materials, and the future of construction.
“As a basket maker I feel very much like an artist and as an artist I am very much a basket maker. Being ‘absurd’ gives me permission to apply traditional techniques to unlikely environments, to move away from utility without losing a sense of discipline.”
This tension runs throughout his practice. Basket weaving becomes less a craft tradition to preserve than a living methodology capable of adapting to contemporary culture. Humor, performance, sculpture and public participation All become ways of testing how far an ancient technique can be stretched without losing the intelligence built into it.
artist lewis prosser (right) with a participant | all images courtesy of the artist
Basketry is becoming a modern design language
Prosser’s relationship with basketry began after he left the city for rural Wales, where spending time outdoors led him to traditional crafts and local foraging materials. “I’m self-taught, so it was a slow process of observation and learning through mistakes. In basketry, your hands are the most important tool, and this built-in relationship with willow really embraced me.”
This natural dialogue with the willow gradually shifted his attention away from the object itself.
“It became less about learning to make baskets and more about understanding what the basket reveals about the people who use it.” Basket weaving itself became an issue. Prosser often describes it as “plastic before plastic”, a material with enormous untapped potential that has been overlooked precisely because of its familiarity.
Prosser’s relationship with basket weaving began after he left the city for rural Wales
absurdity allows tradition to evolve
Rather than treating heritage as something fixed, Prosser sees it as a context that invites experimentation.
“Laughter is a big part of how I relate to people. Irrationality lets me hold contradictions without having to resolve them. It gives me space to be playful, critical and provocative at the same time.’ Understanding the tradition comes first.
‘You can’t really push a technique anywhere meaningful without first getting it right.’ He compares the basket to poetry. “Once you understand the basics of the language, you can start to customize it from your perspective.” Innovation, in Prosser’s practice, comes through fluency, not disruption. Learning the rules allows him to bend them without losing what makes art meaningful in the first place.
“Irrationality lets me hold contradictions without having to resolve them”
Craft offers another model for the future
For Prosser, basketry offers something that modern production increasingly struggles to offer. ‘Basket making is a truly empowering way of working. It resists capitalist models of production, not in a revolutionary or oppositional sense, but because it operates on a completely different logic.’ This logic places knowledge in the body rather than in the machine. “It is a way of creating where knowledge resides in the body and hand of the creator and is transmitted through contact across generations.”
Prosser sees no contradiction between tradition and innovation.“Basketball allows you to do both comfortably. You can imagine a future informed by the past, provided you’re willing to compromise and improvise with the material. His hope is for future practices that are “strange, hyperlocal, embodied and shaped by the people and places they come from.”
for professionals, basketry offers something that modern production increasingly struggles to offer
Performances keep art alive
Prosser’s sculptures rarely remain static. Many are worn, carried, performed or activated through public events that allow them to continue to evolve beyond the studio. “I don’t really like the idea of having my work in a sanitized white cube gallery where you can’t touch it. The basket is inherently tactile, and lasts even longer through contact with people.’
For him, rendering completes the object rather than merely displaying it. “Objects act as tools for play. They establish a set of capabilities, and the event is where those capabilities are put to the test.” The same philosophy shapes its manufacturing process. ‘I set the scene and then the object is processed through the act of making itself.”
