BODYWORK: Australian Jewellery

BODYWORK: Australian Jewellery 1972-2012

11 September – 24 October 2015

Curator: Dr Robert Bell, National Gallery of Australia

Incoming touring exhibition

The celebration of the local, the regional, the private and the personal, and the value of experience and memory, is territory that many contemporary designers and makers seek to articulate and make real. For them, the interpretation of the achievements of the past is both a technical and aesthetic challenge and a statement about the loss of value in mainstream culture.

Contemporary makers preside not only over the technical transformation of materials, such as silica to glass, clay to porcelain or digital signals to fabric, but also over the transformation of their meaning and value.

Bodywork: Australian jewellery 1970–2010 is a travelling exhibition from the National Gallery of Australia and includes the work of over thirty contemporary Australian jewellers. The exhibition is curated by Dr Robert Bell AM, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA).