‘Signature Style’ @ Craft

The flu has had me in its grip for so long now that I nearly missed ‘Signature Style‘ at Craft, only catching it on the last day.

exhibition media

Exhibition media: “Signature Style is a major group exhibition exploring models of collaborative practice in contemporary jewellery. Featuring the work of some of Melbourne’s most exciting artists and jewellery practitioners Signature Style will be a significant addition to the emerging discourse around collaboration and contemporary craft. Collaboration poses a very different method of working – by its very nature, collaboration eschews individual artistic identity in favour of some kind of ‘third’ position. Signature Style will examine new methodologies of working and ‘work’, thinking through the potentials of collaboration within craft and design.“

Meredith Turnbull & Manon van Kouwijk

The combination of pieces by Meredith Turnbull and Manon van Kouswijk is stunning; their display gorgeous and sympathetic. I noticed though that their collaboration was more a conversation, as there didn’t seem to be any pieces with both of their names against them. This differed from other artists collaborations, as most of these were attributed to both artists.

installation; Katherine Wheeler & Polly van der Glas

I also loved the work by Katherine Wheeler and Polly van der Glas. Even though hair and teeth are not really my thing, and the fingers freaked me out initially, it must be said that their materials seemed well-matched. Katherine has written on her blog about the collaboration, with some lovely images; I especially enjoyed reading that: “We have both found the most successful pieces within our installation are the ones that have been made together- and taken on the 3rd entity through the collaborative process- not entirely either artist’s signature style, but a successful merge of the two.“

Tessa Blazey & Alexi Freeman

Thirdly, the dress by Tessa Blazey and Alexi Freeman is arresting. The shadow it creates on the wall is too beautiful.

Participating artists are:

• Nicholas Bastin [site] & Matthew Dux
• Dan Bell, Bianca Hester, Charlie Sofo, Nathan Gray, Christopher LG Hill, Liang Luscombe & Oliver van der Lugt
• Tessa Blazey [site] & Alexi Freeman [site]
• Michaela Bruton & Kane Ikin [site]
• Milly Flemming [site] & Dani Maugeri [site]
• Natalia Milosz-Piekarska [site] & Katherine Doube
• Nina Oikawa & Bridget Bodenham [site]
• Meredith Turnbull & Manon van Kouswijk
• Karla Way [site] & Dylan Martorell [site]
• Katherine Wheeler [site] & Polly van der Glas [site]

installation

Karla Way has written about her work on her blog too, and has some amazing images of her incredible work with Dylan; while I found the sheer number of objects to look at a little overwhelming, my friend loved LOVED it [see her blog post here].

Natalia Milosz-Piekarska has also written about her work on her blog too. Her body piece is incredibly beautiful and the video shown alongside it, worn by dancer Katherine Doube is mesmerising.
Update (30th April): also see VettiLiveinNorthcote’s post for some lovely images of the installation.

Bridget Bodenham has also shared an image of her work with Nina.

‘Signature Style‘ was at Craft 8th March – 27th April 2013.

RMIT Year 3, Semester 2, Showcase

One of our ‘context’ projects was to design and set up a mini-exhibition in the display cases in the hallway of the RMIT G&S part of the building.

We worked in pairs and the exhibition was up for a week each. We were required to document the show as well.

I partnered with the lovely lovely Jamie Andersson – he was one of my dearest friends during my degree. We decided that of the five panels of the display case, we would have two each and the middle one would share our work.

my side of the showcase; image not to be reproduced without permission

My side included work that was being used for my ‘Mapping the Self‘ project. The intent was to work from left to right, white to black, large to small scale, paper to solid materials, one layer to mulit-layer.

This mirrored Jamie’s work ‘Grey Matt(er)‘, which was a selection of his vast collection of found object, which he (matt) painted in graded scale from black to white. I remember he was really happy with this collection and it featured in our year-end exhibition.

(nightime) showcase; image not to be reproduced without permission

(night) showcase; image not to be reproduced without permission

A few more detailed photographs below.

… last post in this series: RMIT Year 3, Semester 2, Silversmithing, continued …
… see more projects from RMIT Year 3 here …

‘Containment’ @ NGV

The 2012 Cicely & Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award is exhibited as ‘Containment‘, at the National Gallery of Victoria Ian Potter Centre.

I was looking forward to seeing this exhibition as the lovely Katherine Wheeler [artist profile] was part of it – and I wasn’t disappointed, her collection was astonishing.

Katherine Wheeler; photograph with gallery permission

Exhibition media: “The Cicely & Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award is a generous legacy of the late Colin Rigg (1895-1982), a former Secretary of the Felton Bequests’ Committee. This ‘Award of Excellence’ focuses on contemporary design practice in the state of Victoria and is a reflection of the NGV’s continuing support for and commitment to contemporary design. It is arguably the richest and most prestigious prize ever offered to a contemporary designer in Australia, with a prize of $30,000. Held every three years, each exhibition is devoted to a particular design discipline. The past five exhibitions, in 1994, 1997, 2003, 2006, and 2009 represented ceramics, metalwork, textiles, jewellery and furniture design respectively. In 2012 the exhibition is dedicated to vessels and the notion of containment.“

I also loved Robin Bold’s group too. This is such a striking group of magnificent vessels; I really wanted to bring one home, especially one with the little ‘egg’ insert (see my previous adoration of her work).

Robin Bold; photograph taken with gallery permission

Participating artists (alphabetical by first name) are:

• David Pottinger (nerikomi ceramics)
• David Ray [website]
• Emma Davies [website]
• Garry Bish (ceramics)
• Ian Mowbray (glass)
• Katherine Wheeler [website, blog]
• Marian Hosking [website] – recipient of the award [article]
• Mark Edgoose [website]
• Neville French [website]
• Owen Rye [website]
• Richard Morrell [website]
• Robin Bold (metalsmith)
• Titania Henderson (ceramics)
• Yhonnie Scarce (glass / metal)

There are some wonderful images on the NGV exhibition page.

I felt the weight of the ceramics here; which isn’t a criticism but my personal response to the medium. There were representatives of metalwork, ceramics and glass; though I couldn’t help but wonder if other media or artists could have qualified to be included in a ‘Containment‘ contemplation, like woodwork or paper or even something entirely sculptural (remembering that ‘craft’ was central to this award). Though I imagine there are criteria I just don’t know about.

This exhibition has also been written about on HandMadeLife – interestingly they also wonder what other media could be included, adding textiles (basket weaving) to my above list.

‘Containment‘ is at NGV Ian Potter Center until 21st July 2013.

‘Radiance: The Neo-Impressionists’ @ NGV

When I studied Art in high school – only up to grade 10, I had to choose between advanced maths and art for grades 11 & 12, it wasn’t permitted to do both; it was an outrage I tell you, and broke my heart, but I digress – I was particularly attracted to Impressionism.

So it was quite a joy to visit ‘Radiance: The Neo-Impressionists‘ at the National Gallery of Victoria. Even more reason to make me happy was that it was the first time I’ve been to the NGV for over a year or more.

It was refreshing to see artists other than the most well-known of the movement: Georges Seurat, Camille Pissarro and Paul Signac. Though of course their works are amazing. Maximillian Luce and Henri-Edmond Cross were revelations to me.

My favourites of the exhibition were many. Naturally photography was not permitted (this is not a free exhibition), so I will link to the website images.

• Paul Signac, ‘The Pont of Saint-Tropez‘; it was fascinating to see the marked-up proof lithograph and the final
• Maximillian Luce, ‘The Louvre and the Pont du Carrousel, night effect‘; so much of the art work of this movement focus on daylight, but this is a night-time one (of a few in the exhibition) and it is stunning
  

  exhibition media; click on image for original source

• Camille Pissarro, ‘Charing Cross Bridge, London‘; I also love the frame
• Georges Seurat, ‘Beach at Gravelines‘; a beautiful intimate little delight
• Henri-Edmond Cross, ‘Toulon, winter morning‘; brush strokes more like tesserae than points and much bolder colours
• Henri-Edmond Cross, ‘The Breaking Sea‘; colouring tending toward Expressionism
  

  exhibition media; click on image for original source

• Paul Signac, ‘Avignon, morning‘ and ‘Avignon, evening‘; beautiful little watercolour sketches
  

  exhibition media; click on image for original source

• Achille Lauge, ‘Portrait of Madame Astre‘; an astonishing large scale study in whites

An excellent quote was on one of the walls: “The belief that the Neo-Impressionists are painters who cover their canvases with multi-colour little dots is a very widespread error … the Neo-Impressionist does not dot, he divides.” Paul Signac

A few observations as I walked around the two rooms of artworks:

• The lithographs were a surprise, their washed out colours so beautiful and muted.
• The term ‘Divisionism‘ was also new to me.
• Pointellism must in a way constrain the ability for an artist to differentiate their work; as the brushstrokes are similar to others using the method; though I imagine they can be individualistic about the size of their dots, the colour palette, the degree of realism and definitions … so maybe it’s not such a limitation.
• I noticed that there was no audio-tour but that many of the images had those little pixel boxes for smart phones; as you can tell by the simple fact I don’t know what they’re called that I have an old-fashioned phone device, so was unable to unlock these little extra snippets of knowledge. I thought this was a bit ‘exclusionist’, and would have liked the option of an audio-tour. Though that said, I recognise this is probably pretty great for international visitors as maybe it would show up in their native language – yes?

I enjoyed the visit, it was wonderful to feel well enough to wander about an exhibition for nearly an hour and fill the visual-image-well; but by the end was suffering a little of pastel and pixel overload.

‘Radiance: The Neo-Impressionists‘ is at NGV until 17th March 2013.

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Update (25th February): it was remiss of me not to mention that this exhibition has a lot of little tips for children – I thought these were especially thoughtful and engaging.

Others have reviewed the exhibition: Hannah Duke, Hannah Duke for Melbourne Pulse, Catharine of Pondering Art,  Peter Madden for Kryztoff, Howard of Extemporanea.

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Special mention: Zaftig

Have you been feeling a bit sad about the lack of jewellery in street and collage art? Or the dearth of references to historically sassy ladies?

Even if you haven’t been sad, this should make you smile …

Anne of Cleeves rocking it new-style.

reproduced here with permission of the artist

Suzanne of Bourbon dreaming of flying.

reproduced here with permission of the artist

New visual-art crush.
All images copyright Zaftig … see more of her work here.

RMIT Year 1, Semester 2, Theory

This post is a little out of order, given the last I wrote about my RMIT projects was Year 3 Silversmithing. It’s strange that I completely forgot about this when writing about Year 1, but these things happen.

I cannot find the original assessment specification sheet (or whatever it’s called – you know what I mean), though I believe it was to create an artwork that had specific reference to one of the theoretical aspects we’d learnt about during our Theory class. I chose to further research and explore “the desensitisation to, and ‘consumerisation’ of, images – particularly images of suffering.“

untitled object; image not to be reproduced without permission

A significant influence on this work were the writings of Susan Sontag, especially her 1977 essay ‘On Photography‘.

The (reasonably brief) essay accompanying the object explains the selection of the image and the construction of the ‘dog-tag’ neckpieces:
Karen Thompson_Y1S2_Theory
[this is an original research essay; no content is to be reproduced without permission]

untitled object; image not to be reproduced without permission

… last post in this series: RMIT Year 3, Semester 1, Silversmithing …
… see more projects from RMIT Year 1 here …

Ellen Pitman ‘Body to Body’ @ Lord Coconut

I think that ‘Body to Body‘, an exhibition by Ellen Pitman, is the first solo artist exhibition at Lord Coconut.

The majority of the exhibition are belt buckles, cast in various metals (though I understand custom orders are welcome in other metals).

exhibition media

Exhibition media: “Objects presented in ‘Body to Body’ replicate the surface of butchered meat, replacing blood for precious metal.  The material juxtaposition cushions the viewer from implicit horror, removing stains of reality: flesh, fluid, death; not unlike the process used by the meat industry to emotionally sanitise the consumption of meat.“

It sounds worse than it looks … well, I was just a little worried initially (being of a delicate constitution!), but the textures are interesting in their own right. If you’re squeamish though, you may not like to know their origin.

The (human) belly button buckles are absolutely delightful; I like the idea of someone walking about fully dressed with a belly button belt buckle.

‘Body to Body‘ is at Lord Coconut until 1st December 2012.

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ps. This is by no means a trivial question, but I’m not sure if belt buckles are jewellery or silversmithing? Not that it’s entirely necessary to label objects and making processes, it’s only a matter of which categories this post includes (helps with people finding posts etc) … What do you think? I used both categories for now…

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