Samantha Dennis, Coleoptera, 2019, glazed ceramic sterling silver and stainless steel. Photo courtesy of Mel de Ruyter

Coleoptera

Samantha Dennis

30 August– 15 September

Tue– Sun 10am-6pm 

(OPENING)

Fri 13 September, 6-9pm

at 

Brunswick Street Gallery 

Gallery 6
Level 1, 322 Brunswick St 
Fitzroy 3065

Samantha Dennis, Coleoptera, 2019, glazed ceramic sterling silver and stainless steel. Photo courtesy of Mel de Ruyter

Coleoptera is a new exhibition from emerging Tasmanian artist Samantha Dennis, examining the unique and bizarre form of insects through hybrid, imagined and hyperbolic brooches. Displayed like pinned specimens, this work is born from a fascination with biology and taxonomy; the evolving methodologies with which western society has sought to explain and order the phenomena of life throughout history. By adopting the aesthetics of natural history collections, Dennis aims to provoke the viewers curiosity and mimic the ways that museums can subvert your experience of the natural world with a dislocated yet uncanny intimacy. Coalescing the crafts of ceramics and silversmithing, this body of work was developed across residencies at the University of Tasmania and Don College, through the support of Arts Tasmania.

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Samantha Dennis, Coleoptera, 2019, glazed ceramic sterling silver and stainless steel. Photo courtesy of Mel de Ruyter

(ABOUT THE ARTIST)
​
Samantha Dennis is an emerging Tasmania artist working across ceramics and silver smithing to produce contemporary jewellery and objects. Dennis holds a Bachelor of Contemporary Arts with first class Honours from UTas and now works from her studio on the outskirts of Launceston. She adopts a sculptural approach to the making and wearing of jewellery, and inspired by form and function found in nature. Pieces for exhibition are often engineered in ways that they appear to grow upon, inhabit or infect the clothed body, and are then displayed as specimen; appropriating aesthetics from taxonomy and natural history museums.