Labour Exchange
Labour Exchange invites you to come and participate in exploring the value at the heart of jewellery practice.
Over 8 years, more than 100 jewellery works have been thoughtfully carved out of what was once Renée’s jewellery bench. The process of making this work has questioned the values embedded in jewellery practice and production.
Labour Exchange now places the process of interrogating this value into your hands. Each item is offered and open to be traded for an item, activity or dollar value of your choosing.
This poses the questions, ‘How do you value this item?’ and ‘What would you trade for it?’
5 hours of gardening?
A dinner with your family?
Something you have made?
The choice is yours..
The exhibition will house the items for trade and an evolving record of the exchanges made.
Over 8 years, more than 100 jewellery works have been thoughtfully carved out of what was once Renée’s jewellery bench. The process of making this work has questioned the values embedded in jewellery practice and production.
Labour Exchange now places the process of interrogating this value into your hands. Each item is offered and open to be traded for an item, activity or dollar value of your choosing.
This poses the questions, ‘How do you value this item?’ and ‘What would you trade for it?’
5 hours of gardening?
A dinner with your family?
Something you have made?
The choice is yours..
The exhibition will house the items for trade and an evolving record of the exchanges made.
a. Renée Ugazio, Labour Exchange, 2016, deconstructed bench, Photo: Kate Mollison
b. Renée Ugazio, Labour Exchange, 2016, Renée at work, Photo: Kate Mollison
b. Renée Ugazio, Labour Exchange, 2016, Renée at work, Photo: Kate Mollison
About the Artist
Dr Renée Ugazio repositions jewellery practice – redefining it as a set of actions and traces freed from their expected sites associated with object production. In doing this jewellery practice is mobilised and reimagined amid the world to explore temporality, experience and material engagement. Her research exposes how the attentive sensibility of a jeweller can surface in the production of artworks. She explores how this has the potential to draw attention to materiality, and our awareness of being in time and place. Dr Ugazio lectures at RMIT University where she received her PhD in 2017. She exhibits widely both nationally and internationally.
Dr Renée Ugazio repositions jewellery practice – redefining it as a set of actions and traces freed from their expected sites associated with object production. In doing this jewellery practice is mobilised and reimagined amid the world to explore temporality, experience and material engagement. Her research exposes how the attentive sensibility of a jeweller can surface in the production of artworks. She explores how this has the potential to draw attention to materiality, and our awareness of being in time and place. Dr Ugazio lectures at RMIT University where she received her PhD in 2017. She exhibits widely both nationally and internationally.