Caitlin Hegney, Mazarine Brooch, 2018, oak, brass, 70x60x20mm. Photo: Shannon Tofts

Flourish

Michelle Stewart
Adrienn Pesti (HUN)
Ailsa Morrant (UK)

Astrid Jaroslawsky (DE)
Rachel Hardie (UK)
​Caitlin Hegney (UK)

3 September – 5 October

Mon– Fri 11am-6pm 
Sat 11am-4pm

at 

Craft Victoria 

Watson Place, off Flinders Lane 
Melbourne 3000 

WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE

Michelle Stewart, Vestige, 2019, Sandstone from the Glasgow School of Art Mackintosh Building, Sterling Silver, nylon cord, 55x85x10mm. Photo:  Michelle Stewart

These six emerging artists have gathered in the shifting milieu of Scotland’s largest city and spent a year working alongside one another in the Glasgow School of Art, Silversmithing and Jewellery Artist in Residence program. Each with a clear focus in mind and a personal direction to navigate and each bringing their own experiences and perspectives. 
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From a deep ancestral belonging in the Glasgow arts, to the comfortable familiarity of an adopted home and the experience through fresh eyes on an old city. These artists all have a way of interpreting this place that echoes the ingenuity and innovation of the Scots. With daily visual cues from a city that boasts an architectural tenacity of the ages and an undercurrent of resilience and strength of character that permeates all, these artists can’t help but infuse these characteristics in their work.

@gsa.artists.in.residence   #gsaflourish   #craftvictoria

Adrienn Pesti, Urban Interaction, 2019, 3Dprinted nylon, acrylic paint, sterling silver. Photo: Adrienn Pesti

(ABOUT THE ARTISTS)
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Michelle Stewart completed a BA (Hons) in Fine Art at RMIT University, Melbourne, (Australia) in 2017. Spending a year as an Artist in Residence at the Glasgow School of Art has driven Michelle to investigate the stimulus of materiality in a closer context. With a concentrated focus on site specificity, Michelle continues to explore ideas surrounding connection to place. Michelle is intrigued by the way an object, material or site can emit a power and create connections between people, whether it is a sentimental reverence, a shared experience or a faint recollection of familiarity that a material can illicit when handled.

Adrienn Pesti is interested in social alienations expressed through stereotypes, prejudices and is enthused by creating possibilities of how to overcome these judgements. Inspiration lies in creating platforms for people from all walks of life, investing their relationships with fellow humans and their environment. She is interested in how jewellery can function as an object to prompt social interactions. Her work reverts us to an almost childlike curiosity. The bright colours and unique textures appeal to the senses, traits that all humans share. Her current project nurtures her concept through contemporary industrial enamelling, structural silver work and 3D printed nylon.

Ailsa Morrant catches and celebrates fleeting, instinctive, subconscious moments of connection with ourselves and others; not big moments, rather transient, everyday ones that are often over before we are even aware they were happening. Being mindful of the ones we often rush past can give us happiness, contentment and resilience. In an age when jewellery for many has predominantly become an expression of materialism, Ailsa makes everyday, ordinary moments visible and wearable. Quietly activist, by using everyday materiality from our environment, Ailsa explores jewellery’s primordial role and value in today’s society as a means of self- expression and mindfulness. 

Astrid Jaroslawsky is a Scottish based goldsmith and jewellery designer from Germany. She graduated in 2014 from „Der staatlichen Zeichenakadmie Hanau“ as a goldsmith and graduated in 2018 from the Glasgow School of Art with a BA (Hons) in Silversmithing and Jewellery Design. Astrid´s work explores jewellery as mnemonic pieces. Throughout a varied material palette and her fascination with material textures, her work explores heritage and materials sentimental, as well as intrinsic value. “I believe that jewellery through its private relationship to ourselves can act as mementoes which speak of memories, places, experiences and people.”

As a maker Rachel Hardie enjoys combining her love of drawing and metalwork skills to create sketch-like objects inspired by the architectural quirks of her hometown of Glasgow, paying particular homage to the chimneys which sleep above the city. Through her practice she likes to use both precious and non-precious metal as she is intrigued by their contrasting colours which she further explores through heat patination and oxidisation. Imperfection is also embraced by intentionally exposing solder joins and highlighting marks born from the making process.

Caitlin Hegney is a Scottish Artist and Jeweller exploring the enigmatic qualities of heritage. She is currently fascinated by the history of the colour blue. The processes that Caitlin uses are meditative and rhythmical; chasing in metal, carving into wood and crushing stone. Caitlin’s practice simultaneously celebrates and subverts traditional techniques, energising and engaging with ancient processes. "I visualise myself as a collector and researcher. Making Jewellery is the medium which allows me to combine my fascinations surrounding anthropology and materiality.”