I do like the revamped Gallery Funaki website. You can see many of the pieces in this exhibition online if you aren’t in Melbourne; though it’s certainly worth personally seeing the current exhibition if you can, for Svenja John‘s ‘Assembly‘ is a riot of colour.
photograph taken with gallery permission
Exhibition media: ““In the 20 years since I began working with the polycarbonate MakrofolTM I have developed, bit by bit, my own ‘Jewellery Construction Kit’. In the beginning there were only bone-shaped parts (which I called x-bones), linked together with rings of various sizes to form chains, earrings and bracelets. Eventually more than 10 different basic elements developed from which all the complex jewellery assemblies are plugged together““.
Svenja has a wonderful gift of putting colours together; and the mobiles are whimsical and I think I’d like one in my house.
photograph taken with gallery permission
To me the neckpieces are the stars of the exhibition. Strangely though I think I love the photographs of them more than the items themselves in person. It’s a strange thing indeed; I’m quite unsettled by the realisation. Perhaps the photographs are taken with some backlight, as the material somehow seems more translucent or even glowing.
Most attractive about these constructions are their allusions to medieval jewellery and Berlin iron work. My favourite is the piece in the middle; unfortunately there isn’t a detailed image of it on the exhibition site, but the colour combination is magnificent – magenta, purples, greys.
photograph taken with gallery permission
I did take some photographs of the right-hand side of the gallery, but I was a little distracted at the time and it was only when I arrived home that I realised they were all out of focus. Oopsies.
Svenja John ‘Assembly‘ is at Gallery Funaki until 25th October 2014.
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Also see: Svenja John ‘X_BRANEN‘ @ Gallery Funaki, August 2009
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Melbourne Jeweller 