Carousel

Sian Edwards, Laced Monitor (stole), 2014, brass mesh, gold-plated sterling silver, onyx beads
fortyfivedownstairs
45 Flinders Lane
Melbourne 3000
1-12 September
Tue-Fri 11am-5pm, Sat 10am-4pm

Opening Tue 1 September, 5-7pm

The carousel turns and with each revolution comes an evolution, as familiar views are given fresh insight. And so it is in contemporary jewellery and object, as new generations of artists climb aboard. From old ideas spring new revelations, familiar forms become strange under new hands and well-loved materials produce striking innovations.     

Carousel is a snapshot of this particular moment in contemporary jewellery and object.  The exhibition frames eleven early career artists from Australia, Austria, Finland, Germany, New Zealand and Thailand at a crucial point on their trajectory, between graduation and life as an established artist.   

Already fêted by their peers and the jewellery community at large, this is a rare opportunity to see the work of such a diverse and accomplished range of emerging makers.  As well as a snapshot of here and now, Carousel offers a glimpse of the future as these eleven artists, with boldness and optimism, re-imagine the contemporary jewellery landscape.
Artists Zoe Brand, Sian Edwards, Benedikt Fischer, Marcos Guzman, Inari Kiuru, René Martin, Lindy McSwan, Amelia Pascoe, Noon Passama, Nadja Soloviev, Kate Wischusen
Noon Passama, Portrait No.22, 2014, brooch, fur, leather, white rhodium plated silver, rose gold plated brass, remanium

Lindy McSwan, High Country Ridge Lines, 2014, vessels, mild steel, enamel. Photographer: Andrew Barcham
About the Artists

Born in Brisbane in 1984, Zoe Brand left the Sunshine State bound for Sydney in 2004. Here she completed an Advanced Diploma in Jewellery and Object Design, at the Design Centre Enmore, TAFE NSW. She also worked in galleries, made jewellery, curated shows and wrote words. In 2012 Brand made the move to the Nations Capital, Canberra and in 2014 completed her Bachelor of Visual Arts majoring in Gold and Silversmithing at the Australian National University. She is currently studying a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) at the same university. She has exhibited in many group shows in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Estonia and her work is held in a number of significant private collections. Brand is also the Director of the Personal Space Project, a gallery located in her bedroom.


Using a pair of tweezers Sian Edwards transforms brass mesh into intricate renderings of animals and animal parts. Sian’s work references both the rich historical use of animals in adornment and the actual animals that share our environment. Sian undertakes a detailed study of her subject, accessing museums and zoo’s to assist in the production of her work. Based in Newcastle, Sian completed an Advanced Diploma of Jewellery and Object Design, Enmore TAFE in 2005 and a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) in Jewellery and Metals, Monash University in 2009. Sian had her first solo exhibition, A Study of Birds at Studio 20/17 in 2010 and has exhibited in group shows nationally including the Filippo Raphael Fresh! Award in 2010 and the National Contemporary Jewellery Prize in 2012. Sian undertook an artist residency in Jaipur, India in 2012 and held her second solo exhibition, Sequins and Scales, at Gray Street Workshop Gallery in 2014. Sian currently has work at Pieces of Eight Gallery in Melbourne and Studio 20/17 in Sydney. 


Benedikt Fischer is a jeweller. He was born and raised in Austria where he studied at a technical school for jewellery. Later he studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He taught at the Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, Germany for two years and most recently at the Sint Lucas Academy in Antwerp. He lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands. His familiar yet dislocated forms are made with repurposed plastic and painstakingly textured by hand. He has won several major awards, including the Marzee Prize (Netherlands 2011), the Elgius Schmuckpreis (Austria 2013), the Preziosa Young Award (Italy 2013), and was a finalist in the inaugural Mari Funaki Award for Contemporary Jewellery (Australia 2014).


Inari Kiuru is an artist and designer with a multidisciplinary practice involving jewellery, objects, images and mixed media installation. She migrated from Finland to Australia in 1995 and worked as a graphic designer until graduating with Honours in Fine Art (Object Based Practice) from RMIT University in 2013. The key concern in Inari’s practice is to reflect upon the hidden extraordinariness of seemingly unimportant, everyday subjects – capturing the sense of a place or a person; a fleeting feeling, a curious atmosphere. Her current investigations include Brunswick Gold, an ongoing series of photographs of discarded matter, and Saturnalia Industrialis, a body of jewellery and objects imagining the collision and convergence of industrial and organic forms through evolution. Inari has exhibited in curated group shows in Australia, USA, Germany, Estonia and The Netherlands. Her pieces have been acquired by the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and the MacMillan collection of RMIT University. In 2014 she was awarded a Judges’ Commendation for her Evolution-brooches in the first inaugural Mari Funaki Award for Contemporary Jewellery, at Gallery Funaki, Melbourne. 
inarikiuru.blogspot.com


Marcos Guzman is an emerging artist living in Melbourne. He graduated with Honours at RMIT and was awarded the Maggie Fairweather Residency in 2013. Marcos has exhibited nationally and internationally, including in Galerie Marzee’s International Graduate Show 2011, Fresh! 2014, in which he won the inaugural Lightly Mentorship Award, and was a finalist in the inaugural Mari Funaki Award for Contemporary Jewellery at Gallery Funaki in 2014. Marcos’ work is a means for remembering, vacationing, exploring, escaping; an opportunity for the realisation of something fundamental and seemingly not complex. It is about creating an ideal state of naivety through exploring and revealing colour, form and particular characteristics and ambiguities inherent within the materials of his choice. The use of narrative in the titles and statements reinforces this state of innocence. Marcos’ current work is inspired by his definitive past, possible future experiences and the little moments in between. 


René Martin was trained as a goldsmith at the Staatliche Zeichenakademie Hanau. Since 2010, René has been studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg in the class of Fine Arts / Gold and Silversmithing of Suska Mackert, Simone ten Hompel and Ulla Mayer. In 2013 he was appointed master student by Simone ten Hompel.
For his works Tableware and Cups, René takes industrially manufactured plastic tableware as his starting material. The plastic tableware is brought into new forms with the traditional means and tools of the silversmithing craft, the techniques of hammering and moulding are applied. A mass product is thus individualised and animated. Through the intervention of forging arise compelling individual pieces, and also ensembles.


Lindy McSwan completed a Bachelor of Fine ArtHonours,specialising in Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT in 2014 and an Advanced Diploma of Engineering Technology, 
Jewellery at NMIT in 2006. Lindy has exhibited her work nationally and internationally.In 2012,her work was selected for Fresh!  when she received the Sofitel on Collins Award resulting in her first solo exhibition at the Sofitel in 2014. On completing Honours in 2014, Lindy received the Diana Morgan Post Graduate and Honours Gold and Silversmithing Prize, with her work acquired for The W.E. McMillan Collection, RMIT University.  Lindy’s practice spans jewellery, vessels, sculptural objects, and works in paper.  
lindymcswan.com


Originally trained in the sciences, and with a long work history in science-based organisations, Amelia Pascoe formally embarked on her artistic career in 2010. She graduated from Whitireia New Zealand with a Bachelor of Visual Arts and Design, majoring in contemporary jewellery, in 2012. Amelia’s work straddles the boundaries of object and adornment, and the allure of things elusive has been a recurring theme. Since graduating Amelia has had a number of solo shows in galleries around New Zealand. Her work was included in Wunderruma – a recent survey of New Zealand jewellery, and is held in public and private collections. In 2013, Amelia undertook a six-week residency in Italy, with Fabrizio Tridenti. Ruudt Peters is her current conspirator through Handshake2 - a two-year professional development and exhibition programme for emerging New Zealand jewellers.  


Born and educated in Thailand, Noon Passama moved to the Netherlands in 2007, where she graduated from Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2010. She won both the Rietveld Prize and the Marzee Prize from Galerie Marzee in Nijmegen, Netherlands and soon after had her first solo presentation at the Galerie Ra, Amsterdam. Noon has collaborated with Antwerp-based fashion houses Capara and Ek Thongprasert. Her work with Capara won the Emerging Artist Award 2012 granted by Art Jewelry Forum and in 2014 she was awarded the prestigious Herbert Hoffman Prize at Schmuck in Munich, Germany. Noon has exhibited in Amsterdam, Bangkok, Florence, London, Melbourne, Munich, Paris, Seoul, and Zurich and featured in major fashion magazines, such as Blend, Dazed and Confused (Japan), Items, L'Official Homme (China), Surface, Vogue (Italy and Turkey), Vogue Gioiello, Wallpaper, and Zoo. Her subjects of interest are archetypal and classical structures of jewellery, and how to translate them into new contexts, where forms, materials, and techniques are applied to their broadest senses by means of conceptual approaches. 


Nadja Soloviev graduated from the Goldsmithing School in Pforzheim before undertaking a yearlong internship at metalab gallery/Courtesy of the Artist in Sydney in 2009. She also gained a Bachelor Fine Arts – Jewellery Art and Design from HDK, Gothenburg University, Sweden. Nadja has just begun her final year of studies in Suska Mackert’s class at the Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremburg, Germany. Nadja is inspired by ordinary things that one finds in everyday life. Her recent works are conceptual, wearable pieces. She uses the element of change and transformation in order to create a personal connection between the wearer and their jewellery.  


Kate Wischusen graduated from a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) Honours, Object Based Practice at RMIT in 2014. In 2014 Kate’s work was selected to be shown at Talente in Munich, Germany, Fresh! in Melbourne and the Galerie Marzee International Graduate Exhibition in Nijmegen, Netherlands. Kate creates objects and jewellery that explore the permanence of memory and the role of the souvenir. Working predominantly in mild steel and enamel her work references archived markings in the urban landscape.