Connecting with Canberra

Craft ACT’s current exhibition block features a contemporary metal takeover by leading local, national and international jewellers and metalsmiths.  

The intimacy and personality of jewellery and metalwork is grounded by identity and place. Thus, Craft ACT would like to highlight makers in our new exhibition block that have a connection to our city of Canberra. 

The Neck is an exhibition curated by Bridget Kennedy which explores the neck as a vehicle for socio-political expression. Zoe Brand is one of the twelve jewellers from Australia and New Zealand featured in this exhibition of neckpieces.  Brand grew up in Brisbane but came to Canberra in 2014 to study Gold and Silversmithing at the ANU School of Art. Her work focuses on jewellery archetypes and the readymade, they demonstrate the performative nature of jewellery and its role as a device for communication.  

Through the exhibition Body Layer; Semblance and the Self, curator Simon Cottrell asks audiences “how might considering jewellery as an action, as the central priority of jewellery, enable the creation of work that more broadly fulfills the reasons why people want to wear jewellery?”. This exhibition features Kristina Neumann, an emerging artist and designer-maker from Canberra who graduated from the ANU School of Art Jewellery & Object Workshop. Having grown up in Canberra, Neumann reflects upon the anxieties of leaving the family home and the disruption to stability and security that Australian millennials are experiencing. The pieces of brick and mortar that Neumann has crafted are inspired by the artist’s past homes and how the body moves through and is shaped by space.  

Making: A Way of Life features the work of Dan Lorrimer and Alison Jackson who are “a team of two. United by [their] love of making”. The two artists are both Canberra-based and alumnus of the Australian National University, Jackson in Gold and Silversmithing and Lorrimer in Sculpture with a specialisation in metal forming. Their collaborative exhibition explores small-scale production techniques through a collection of metal hollowware and flatware. Combining stainless steel and brass, Jackson and Lorrimer have created a material language that allows for endless variation and creative potential.  

The Small Connections exhibition is a collection of neck pieces, earrings, brooches, and objects made by the acclaimed JamFactory metal Studio staff, tenants and associates. Small Connections features the work of Darwin-born jeweller Kath Inglis, who now practices in Adelaide and is represented here in Canberra at Bilk: Gallery for metal and glass. Inglis is a material-based maker who has throughout her career explored the everyday material of Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC). Her work transforms the often-critiqued material of plastic, to create enduring and precious pieces of jewellery.  
 
This block of exhibitions will be on at Craft ACT Gallery until 17 July 2021. 

Image: Alison Jackson + Dan Lorrimer, Flatware Collection, 2021. Photo: Alison Jackson.