The reception for Radical Jewelry Makeover (RJM) Artist Project at the Metal Museum is TODAY (central standard USA time)!
RECEPTION & ARTIST TALK
FEB. 11, 2024
3 – 5PMPlease join us for a conversation with the Radical Jewelry Makeover co-directors, Susie Ganch and Kathleen Kennedy, at the opening reception.
Metal Museum website
Radical Jewelry Makeover: The Artist Project brings together jewelers working together to examine mining issues while making innovative jewelry from recycled sources… The Metal Museum will be exhibiting over 70 works by over 25 different artists that unleash their creativity to breathe new life into each item creating stunning pieces that embody both art and social consciousness. Through collaboration with artists and jewelry professionals, Radical Jewelry Makeover: The Artist Project highlights the potential for social change and the significance of responsible sourcing.
https://www.metalmuseum.org/radical-jewelry-makeover
I have again been invited by Susie and Kathleen, the RJM co-directors, to exhibit works made from recycled jewellery. Big thanks to Liz Shaw of Queensland College of the Art Griffith University for sending me a package of locally collected discarded jewels to work with, which supplemented pieces received earlier for previous iterations of this project. It took a while, but last year it really became clear that I will always have a few bags of junk jewellery kicking ’round my studio. Now I realise there will always be a part of my mind running the “how could these parts be reworked to fit my message” script in the background.
Last year I decided I would output just one message from my practice; “rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all IPCC 2023” (from headline statements of the IPCC report). That sentence, converted into ascii/binary, was encoded in two recycled jewellery projects; the piece made for the Metal Museum show is RCW 2, while the final, RCW 4 was exhibited with Remade Reloved with Bridget Kennedy at ADC. (RCW 1 is still being manufactured, RCW 3 / Ngarngk.)
To complement the message on the breastplate I also made a pair of earrings from the same recycled materials I received from QCAGU. When decoded, they each read: SOS.
You can see all these works plus a couple more of mine, and those of many, many other beautifully talented artists, at the Metal Museum in Memphis from the 4th of Feb – 14th of April 2024.
374 Metal Museum Drive, Memphis, TN 38106, USA