Artists
This exhibition Here’s Something I’ve Been Wanting To Show You is all about a journey. It’s a punctuated journey as you move along the works, slowing down on approach, stopping and starting, leaning in carefully, squinting to see a detail or a hint of colour.
Punctuation is usually the provenance of language. Comma’s, question marks and colons are used to clarify and emphasise meaning, ‘locales’ that give us time to catch our breath, reflect and help give understanding to the world we live in. The two large vessels and the east and west walls in this exhibition are full to the brim with jewellery and objects, or ‘locales’, that suggest relationships and connection, forming a community of RMIT Gold and Silversmithing students and participants from the two Blak Design workshops from 2018 to now, many works been shown for the first time. These locales are not ones of language but are ones of actions, experiences and a sense of belonging so thoughtfully nuanced in Micheala Pegum’s catalogue essay for this exhibition.
This journey for our alumni was disrupted by studio closures while Melbourne experienced lockdowns, a punctuated learning and teaching experience for students and staff while we transitioned from face to face learning, to online classes, then back to face to face learning, thinking what’s next. For many of us, it redefined the notion of home. We sought new way of working, new tools and materials with a resilience not seen before. The large vessels and gallery walls are home to the locales of what’s next.
At the exhibition celebration a ‘runway’ intervenes the space providing a particular environment for new significations of displaying jewellery to emerge. The to and fro, unravelling nature of the runway conceptually allows all things around it to engender this journey and, in doing so, builds relationships. The RMIT culture team, the poster and website, curators, runway, Gold and Silversmithing auctions and donors, Koorie Hertitage Trust, RMIT School of Art staff and students, RUSU, Radiant Pavilion, invited speakers, event coordinators and caterer, property services and most importantly, the Gold and Silversmithing Alumni are all distinct locales who’s care and dedication has activated this specific journey and time.
MARK EDGOOSE
I consider the ways in which multiple scales; the planetary, the geographic, the domestic and the personal, converge in and with human experience.
In a diversion away from her usual art practice in painting and weaving Brigdale, a YortaYorta woman, worked as a member of the Koorie Heritage Trust ‘Blak Design’ program 2022.
My jewellery practise aims to question and investigate the stereotypes and archetypes within today’s society and eventuated in the creation of wearable art as a rebellion against conformity of social norms.
Emma Byrne is a Naarm based artist who works with beading and adornment to communicate important questions.
I look to the everyday 'stuff' that accumulates in drawers, pockets, attics, cupboards and in piles on the street, collecting traces of the encounters that have occurred between people and things.
My practice revolves around feelings and emotions and this series of works describe our fragile feelings.
Ko Jou Chen is a Taiwanese artist based in Naarm/Melbourne.
The Inner Crease series explores the ambiguity between surfaces and layers of skin. It questions the relationship between the body and the jewellery.
In the midst of a plastic pollution crisis, I've explored ways in making something beautiful and playful that represents up-cycling essentially from rubbish.
This series of Excess production line work is part of YI-Jen Chu excess production line kinetic objects collection.
My jewellery pieces represent journeys and songlines.
I create works that are both monumental & micro.
Brooke Coutts-Wood’s craft based practice draws from the minutiae of everyday objects and environments.
By considering the significance and history of objects, I can explore how metal and materiality can convey meaning.
My work is inspired by the underwater worlds of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
My practise delves into intuition, and its ability to precipitate creation.
Rose Gamble is a Gold and Silversmithing artist that investigates the conceptual boundaries of what is jewellery through object making and the creation of site- specific and public artworks.
In my work, I replicate the collars and fashion from this 1960s photo, using materials that blend into the background, echoing my family's strategy of blending in for protection.
Proud Wadawurrung woman, master weaver and blak designer through Blak Design Program, Koorie Heritage Trust.
My work reveals raw emotions through tactile metal forms, transforming discarded cupcake paper and mussel shells into intricate adornments.
Approaching self as a mutable and elusive fragment within the broader environment, my practice involves jewellery and object making, videos, and photography.
Courtney Hogan is a jeweller and artist currently based in Tarntanya (Adelaide), South Australia.
These are some of my favourite artworks that I created over the covid period.
Teegan Horat is a multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm / Melbourne, working across various media including silver, ceramics, found objects, and illustration.
I search for potential new understandings of the relationship between individuals/objects and the space they inhabit.
Katherine Hubble’s work explores the notion of what pearl jewellery could be in the twenty-first century.
Yujun Jiang makes contemporary jewellery that engages the intimacy and healing that comes from maternal energies through narrative expression.
Cassie Leatham
doedoet: to tie up is a series of neck adornments inspired by research into Gulumerridjin (Larrakia) ancestral material culture and my family’s mixed Asian, Aboriginal, and Anglo-Australian heritage.
My jewellery informed practice focuses on the notion of interconnectedness, most specifically, humanities relationship with nature.