The Language of Things: Meaning and Value in Contemporary Jewellery
Lauren Kalman, But if the crime is beautiful...Strangers to the garden, 2016, inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist.
The intimacy of jewellery worn on the body gives us a unique way of showing who we are and what’s important to us.
This exhibition expanded on our associations with adornment: drawing out how ideas of value have changed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The Language of Things featuredover 100 artists from Europe, America, Asia, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand whose work reveals how personal meaning develops from the often unusual materials and processes used in the field of contemporary jewellery.
The contemporary jewellers in this exhibition make pieces that comment on social, cultural or political matters through the materials that they choose to work with. Their themes include the shifting perception of precious materials such as gold, vanity, gender stereotyping, associations with place and our relationships with accessories, the environment and each other. Using our inherent understanding of jewellery as a symbol of personal expression to explore these ideas, The Language of Things also prompts us to reflect on how we ‘read’ the materials that surround us in daily life.
The Language of Things included work by Bernard Schobinger; Conversation Piece (duo), Daniel Kruger, David Bielander, Dorothea Prühl, Gerd Rothmann , Gijs Bakker, Helen Britton, Jiro Kamata, Karl Fritsch, Lauren Kalman, Liesbet Bussche, Lisa Gralnick, Mia Maljojoki, Moniek Schrijer, Noon Passama, Otto Künzli , Renee Bevan, Sharon Fitness, Susan Cohn, Suska Mackert, Ted Noten, Réka Lörincz and Zoe Brand.
The Dowse Art Museum | 24 Feb – 24 Jun 2018