Kathleen Hunt, in the workshop. Photo: Charmaine Lyons photography

The State of Shine

Alison Bruce
Katherine Grocott
Chloe Healey
Gerard Herbst (US/AU)
Mari Hirata (JP/AU)
Kathleen Hunt
Catherine Hunter
Minna Jun

Charlotte Kippax
Alicia Lane
Megan MacKenzie
Helen Moriarty
Jandy Pannell
Robyn Pell
Nellie Peoples

Clare Poppi (NZ)
Kierra-Jay Power
Melissa Stannard
Michelle Stemm
Katie Stormonth
Mia Wells
​Helen Wyatt

30 August– 15 September 

Tue– Sun 10am-6pm

(OPENING)

Fri 13 September, 6-9pm

at 

Brunswick Street Gallery 

Gallery 5
Level 1, 322 Brunswick St 
Fitzroy 3065 

Nellie Peoples, The State of Shine, 2019. Photo: Nellie Peoples

The Jewellers and Metalsmiths Group of Australia (Queensland Chapter) Inc. presents The State of Shine. By using the medium of jewellery and small object making, selected JMGQ members explore designing and making in the context of Queensland, as well as the broader framework of Australia. The unique voice of a place is interpreted through conceptual examination, and the process of making, across the length and breadth of Queensland. The exhibition discusses the significance of place on thinking and making, within the sphere of contemporary jewellery and small objects.

@jmga_qld   #jmgaqld   #jmgq   #jmgqxradpav   #thestateofshine   @brunswickstreetgallery

Kathleen Hunt at the bench. Photo: Charmaine Lyons photography

(ABOUT THE ARTISTS)
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The Jewellers and Metalsmiths Group of Australia (Queensland Chapter) Inc. (JMGQ) presents The State of Shine. JMGQ is a membership based, not-for-profit organisation, run on the creative energy and enthusiasm of its volunteers and membership. It represents members across Queensland in cities and regional areas. It has an established history, playing a constructive and influential role in contemporary jewellery practice within Queensland, as well as nationwide.

Clare Poppi is an artist and educator working in Brisbane, Australia. Her primary practice is in jewellery and small object making, with a focus on sustainable design and wearables. She uses a combination of recyclable and biodegradable materials, adopting a cradle-to-cradle mentality in her exhibition and production work. Currently completing a Master of Visual Art at Griffith University, Clare is undertaking research into collaborations between jewellers and wearers with the aim of fostering meaningful relationships between wearer and their jewellery collections. Clare’s work critiques the fast fashion model and seeks to examine and improve the sustainability of jewellery production.

Nellie Peoples is an emerging artist currently working and living in Brisbane, Australia. She is a member of Bench, a collective workshop space for emerging contemporary jewellers. Her practice is in jewellery and small objects, in which she explores the constellation made between objects and people; and how the object itself plays into the connections of those who surround it by representing on-going narratives. Her designs and objects highlight and reflect the conservation of those connections that encircles the object with a focus on special moments, beloved people, or a particular places.

Helen Moriarty is a recent graduate from Queensland College of Art, majoring in Jewellery and Small Objects, earning her a Bachelor of Fine Art from Griffith University. She has actively participated exhibiting her work since beginning her fine art studies, and has participated in group shows here in Australia, the United States, and Hong Kong, as well as online exhibitions. Helen is currently using the textures, colours and chemistry of vitreous enamels on 3D metal shapes in the exploration of the landscape and our relationship as humans with landscape.

Alicia Lane is a current candidate for a Doctorate of Visual Art at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. She graduated with First Class Honours in 2013, majoring in Jewellery and Small Objects and also works in sculpture and installation. Her work explores the intersections between human culture and perceptions of the natural world. Her work has featured in numerous exhibitions and award shows across the country and overseas. In 2014 Araucarian Necklace, was awarded Highly Commended in the Rio Tinto Alcan Martin Hanson Memorial Art Award and in 2016 Rainforest Remnants won the City of Gold Coast Art Award in the SWELL Sculpture Festival. Alicia was born in Toowoomba, grew up around South East Queensland and has lived and worked in Brisbane since 2000.
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Megan MacKenzie is a jewellery artist who fossicks for the remnants of car crashes, and turns them into jewelry. As she lives near a major road in inner city Brisbane, she never lacks for source material. Megan aims to highlight the social and environmental implications of her core material, via transformation into "valued" objects. Megan works in the built environment sector. She has shown her work at Autor International Contemporary Jewellery Fair in Bucharest (2017), was a finalist in Contemporary Wearable 2015 Award Exhibition, and won the wearables category of the Hornsby Regional Art Returned to Glory Award (2014).

Michelle Stemm works from a small studio in Brisbane, however her jewellery making started 6 years ago on the Sunshine Coast. Her design practice is lead by a desire for versatile, innovative and functional jewellery. She explore connections both as a function of a piece and metaphorically, between maker and wearer. She explores form in relation to the natural and occasionally the built world. She looks for shapes and lines, using pictures and sketches to refine and develop a concept, before transferring to materials and experimenting with form. Connections create opportunity and dynamism, bringing form and function together in endlessly interesting ways.

Catherine Hunter (Kate) is a contemporary jewellery maker and studio artist working in metals using traditional metalsmithing techniques, incorporating natural fibres, porcelain, found objects and discarded plastics, in her studio on the edge of a mangrove estuary in Cairns, Queensland. Born in Coffs Harbour Kate graduated with a Bachelor of Design: Jewellery andMetalsmithing from the SA College of Advanced Education in 1984 with distinctions. Kate is also an accomplished seafarer. Her time at sea, 1989 to 2007, piqued her awareness of global environmental challenges. Kate’s work draws the viewer into detailed visual narratives of nature’s struggles and triumphs.

Melissa Stannard is a narrative jeweller and artist she is inspired by many things, from deeply personal cultural storytelling, to exploring and understanding nature and ones place within it, especially the overlooked. From a perspective of intimacy she studies the environment where she lives on the Sunshine Coast, following the transitions of the Coastal Shorelines, to wallum heath, estuarine lakes, forests and mountains, capturing the micro and macrocosms within each landscape. Her art is about connecting to country and place, exploring traces of the landscape with an Indigenous spiritual practice of Dadirri. Recording sensory, visual, personal, cultural and environmental connections and impressions.

My Name is Charlotte Kippax, I am the creative mastermind behind Solve Coagula By Kippax, I am a Jewellery Designer in Brisbane, Australia. All of my designs are inspired by growing up on a farm and having an intricate connection to flora and fauna in Queensland. In growing up on a farm, you come to terms with life and death, the unpredictability of how the weather can let the land flourish, or cause the earth to suffer. My designs feature both local Faunae, gemstones, and cast objects. I have always had an interest in the magical, odd, strange and unusual.

Katherine Grocott has been interested in jewellery design since she took it as a minor subject in her Fashion Degree. She started to focus on jewellery design in 2014. Katherine’s work is quite strong and graphic visually. She appreciates minimalism and this features in her work. Over the years, her commitment to environmental sustainability has influenced Katherine’s design process. Recycled and found objects feature quite strongly in her work. Katherine believes that jewellery offers a creative opportunity to express oneself. A piece of jewellery can tell a story, make a statement, start a conversation or act as a memory keeper.

Minna Jun is a Brisbane based jewellery artist and maker. Her work begins from exploring concepts, experimenting with processes and investigating through creating, with outcomes that often incorporate organic patterns, textures and lines. As part of her practice, the how and why an object is made and developed generally takes on more importance than the aesthetics of the final result. One of her greater goals is to create moments of discovery and realisation, when a user or observer connects with the object they're interacting with and leaves with an understanding of something new.

Kierra-Jay Power is an emerging artist who lives in Brisbane, Queensland, and is currently studying a Bachelor of Fine Art Honours at the Queensland College of Art. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions across Darwin, Brisbane, and Melbourne, and is represented in several private collections. In 2017 she received a Research Bursary from the Griffith University Honours College to travel to the Natural History Museum in Paris, France and create a body of work inspired by their specimens.

In a process of continual generation and regeneration, expression or suppression, and as a means of understanding and connecting with the world, Kathleen Hunt works with reclaimed and repurposed materials, unravelling and twisting, to reveal hidden stories. This series is a response to her local environment - the UNESCO Noosa Biosphere Reserve - where tourism is the main industry and the natural environment is the product. In the rush of development, the community finds itself fighting to maintain the environmental integrity and amenity of the area, and her ecosophic practice is an ethical/political articulation between the environment, the social and the subjective.

Katie Stormonth is a contemporary jeweller based in Brisbane, Australia and is one of the founding members of Bench (a collective jewellery studio). She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours in 2011 and currently works as the technical officer (Jewellery and Small Objects) at Griffith University. Her practice aims to expand the boundaries of wearable body adornment through experimentation of materials and forms. She constructs alluring arrangements of repetitious forms and painted surfaces, highlighting the patterns of bold and decorative chased line work, aiming to provoke the wearer to both see and feel the pieces.

Mia Wells creates wearable treasures that speak of issues important to her. Environmentalism and the rejection of our society's throw-away culture inform my practice. She works in a lasting and recyclable medium with delicate materials collected and then returned to nature.

Mari Hirata is a visual artist + silversmith based in Brisbane. Since completing her Master of Arts in Visual Arts at Queensland College of Art, Mari has exhibited in venues and institutions throughout Australia and overseas. Her practice over the years has revolved around photography, sculpture, installation, and silversmithing. Mari has received ongoing mentorship under renowned Gold Coast based Gold & Silversmith Sel Pilgrim since 2014, and through the medium of metalsmithing, she has progressed forth onto developing a distinct style that responds to her surroundings and relational concepts, while reflecting the aesthetics and sensibilities of her Japanese cultural heritage.

Alison Bruce has been making jewellery for the last twenty years but only with a sense of the conceptual since studying and completing a Fine Arts Degree in 2016. Everything one does informs everything else. Her attempts to understand and internalise the work she did in my drawing classes now seem to be emerging in her jewellery design. In addition she have been studying cuisine and patisserie and this study has also focussed her eye on what draws one in. Much of her work has a basis in the natural world of plants. Keen observation and a sense of marvel at the extraordinary beauty of a tiny plants will compel her to make. These latest works involve a conversation between the 2/D and 3/D and the questions of what makes an object beautiful. 

Robyn Pell is a jewellery and small objects creator, working in metal and found objects. Exploring interactions between her work and the viewer, is significant and entwined in the fabric of her designs. She combines textures and forms to suggest past narratives and collected memories. Drawing on the old and new, found and given, to express connections; a continuation of old histories that flow into new narratives.

Chloe Healey is a contemporary jeweller and artist from the Gold Coast, that predominantly uses sterling silver in her work. Chloe’s most recent bodies of work explore the notion of art vs craft by combining sterling silver with second hand embroidery cotton or fibers to create pieces that can both adorn the body or be displayed as wall hangings. Her works are lovingly hand crafted from her home studio where she draws inspiration from the surrounding nature. In 2017 she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art majoring in Jewellery and Small Objects from Griffith University, Queensland College of Art.

Now based in Brisbane, and having exhibited, studied and worked in both large cities and 3rd word countries, has allowed Jandy Pannell to experience/see/find many unexpected “treasures" that have been an influence, or a base, or an embellishment for her work. Trained in hot glass and metal-smithing workshops and residencies, Pannell has now refined her practice to include predominantly reused, recycled and found objects and metal. Reused plastic bags have become important in her work, often combined with precious metal. In Brisbane, her work can be found at Qagoma and Artisan.

Gerard Herbst began to make jewellery at age 15, he went on to San Diego State University were he studied sculpture and jewellery design. In 1995 he and his wife moved to Noosa where he continued to create pieces in the USA, Australia and New Zealand. His current work explores parallels between the use of the continuous single line and the process and lineage of choices in ones life. The single line form creates outcomes were the choices are all chronological and connected. Similarly one travels through life confined to the same reality. Inescapably the line-path connects through time.

Helen Wyatt is currently completing a research-based Masters of Visual Arts at Queensland College of Art. In the last twelve months she has exhibited in the Triple Parade Shanghai Jewellery Biennale; Inhabiting Space at the Glasshouse, Port Macquarie Regional Gallery and is currently in the Australian Touring Show USE. Her work references sites in transition where nature and industry intersect. For State of Shine she takes an aerial view of jewel-like islands in Moreton Bay /Quandamooka but bear the traces of settlement structure. She writes Visual Arts reviews for ArtsHub and curates a window gallery in Evans St Balmain, Sydney.