Tinker Tailor Soldier exhibition
image by artisan
‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor’ is an exhibition on at the moment at artisan in Queensland. It opened last month in Brisbane and is a touring exhibition - until 2013!
The exhibition was curated by Kirsten Fitzpatrick
The exhibition was curated by Kirsten Fitzpatrick
This exhibition contains 100 brooches by 100 Australian jewellers, celebrating the lives of 100 significant women in this country’s history.
Above is an image of my brooch that I made for this exhibition.
The woman that I was given was Agnes Buntine (1822 - 1896)
artisan asked a number of questions in relation to the brooch produced. Here are my responses:
The Australian woman I had was Agnes Buntine c.1822-1896, a pastoralist and bullocky. After researching her history I initially thought that the best way to represent her was with quite a large brooch, very simple and graphic. The more I thought about her, the more my initial design concept changed. I felt that the easy interpretation of this strong and unconventional woman would be to use industrial/raw materials such as steel and wood, in a big bold brooch.
Then I thought that even though Agnes led an unconventional life, she was born in Scotland in the 1800s and would have been raised with all the expectations that a woman was to have within that era. So even though she ended up running bullock teams and working within male dominated trades, she was still a woman of a particular era.
I think that a woman such as Agnes Buntine would possibly have had small keepsakes that were precious to her. So my brooch design echoes Victorian jewellery, smaller in scale, with intricate details. The metal details on the side of the brooch reference early Australian gold jewellery which often had bouquets of local flowers.
I deliberately ' aged' the metal, parts are worn through, so that the brooch is not 'perfect'; that through wear the brooch may have changed. That there was a history to the brooch.
I have engraved scroll patterns around the frame of the brooch, again referencing the era that Agnes lived in. Around the bezel holding the wood, I engraved the warp and weft of fabric, a motif that I frequently used referring to the nature of materials to tell a story.
I wanted there to be a slight discomfort between the bezel holding the wood and the rest of the brooch as the different roles that Agnes Buntine would have had were often in conflict with each other; that as a wife and mother, a bullocky and pastoralist.
Explain any particular significance of materials used if applicable
materials used in the brooch:
sterling silver, citrines, wood, enamel paint, wood, stainless steel
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor
30 September - 12 November 2011
artisan
381 Brunswick Street
Fortitude Valley, QLD
.
brooches, a ring, a pendant
.
These works formed part of my exhibition These are the things that hold me here ( a house, a vessel, a shell, a ring) held at Craft Victoria in 2004. I have put a couple of the images on here before, but never as a group. This series of jewellery pieces were conceived as one work. I was looking at a Victorian house, my Great Aunt's house, in Koroit, a regional town in Victoria. This work sat with the series of black houses that I made also exploring this house and place and culture.
All the pieces are made from sterling silver and copper, with enamel paint.
How do humans form such powerful and mysterious attachments to country? The philosopher Gaston Bachelard believed that all really inhabited space bears the essence of the nature of home, that the human imagination begins to create a recognizable place whenever people find the slightest shelter, walls of impalpable shadows or the illusion of protection.
...The ways in which humans demarcate their space are bound by the rules and customs of the cultures of which they form a part - the way in which they actually and symbolically create landscape within the cultural community probably reflects other organising principles of that society and its world view.
Return to Nothing, the Meaning of Lost Places. Peter Read
162
some random
moment, in
the middle of this
life, when you
appear to me.
A Tomb for Anatole
Stephane Mallarme
all photos by Terence Bogue
.
These are the things that hold me here ( a house, a vessel, a shell, a ring)
In 2004 I exhibited my Master of Arts folio at Craft Victoria. The title of this exhibition was These are the things that hold me here (a house, a vessel, a shell, a ring). There were three parts to this body of work. The first I called 'The Koroit Series'. These jewellery pieces were part of this series.
small things, part 2
Here is an installation shot of the work in the gallery. I wanted the work to look very formal, as if the work had been pulled out of storage from a private collection, and had simply been placed on a shelf for viewing. Alongside the work I exhibited a series of drawings which recorded the pieces made, as well as suggesting other works yet to be made. I have also included an image of a box that formed part of the collection, the crocheted bags grow out of the side of the box.
small things
In August this year I had an exhibition at Pablo Fanque in Sydney. It was called 'small things'. This is what Pablo Fanque wrote about it:
small things has been conceived as a collection by established Melbourne artist Katherine Bowman for her inaugural jewellery exhibition. It is a private collection; a collection of disparate objects that found their way together. Their materials, details, and colours, link and separate each piece from the other, but together they are a collection
Here are some of the 'small things'.