I should have mentioned this a few weeks ago, but right now curator (and visual artist) Michelle Genders is about a quarter of her way through the Unlimited Substance series of exhibitions at Gaffa Gallery in Sydney, Australia.
Unlimited Substance is a series of shows that have been planned to showcase the depth and breadth of contemporary jewellery practice, with what seems to me a focus on displaying the talents of emerging to early and mid-career artists.
Genders has banded a series of exhibitions, seven in total, together to run consecutively from January to April 2015. They include, alongside a huge array of participating jewellery artists, a host of other other artists – musicians, poets, visual artists – to further flesh out her investigations that theme each exhibition. It’s a series with an incredible scope, undeniably ambitious, and yet an idea whose time has come for those of us who are looking to further elucidate and sustain the connection between the works that we make and the ideas that they are built around.
From the blog:
The field of contemporary jewellery spans a wide variety of applied practices and ideas. There is a great deal of hands on exploration and crafting of materials, as well as, a deep contemplation of the nature of and associations to materials. Pieces are resolved with a keen awareness of the way that they relate to different parts of the human body, as well as, how the pieces are transformed when they are worn by a person.
The series of exhibitions in ‘Unlimited Substance’ will highlight the diversity of practice in the field and the high standard of skill employed to bring the pieces to life. The exhibition themes will raise critical commentary by featuring pieces that relate to our bodies and their movement through the world. They will also explore the mood, poetry, expression and narratives that can be communicated through the pieces, and experiment with the context in which contemporary jewellery and objects are displayed.
I will be a part of the Comments exhibition, opening on the 5th of March and continuing on til the 16th, and then will be included in the coda, Perfect Mutations, being mounted as a part of the JMGA conference at the Chrissie Cotter gallery in Sydney in July.
If you’re in Sydney I urge you to check out the exhibition series, and if you’re not but are planning a trip soon, go and check at least one out. The remaining shows, at Gaffa Gallery, are:
05 February – 16 February – Dark metamorphosis
19 February – 02 March – Let your hair down
05 March – 16 March – Comments
19 March – 30 March – On the horizon
02 April – 13 April – Creation * Protection * Transformation
with the final show at Chrissie Cotter:
08 July – 19 July – Perfect mutations