Victorian Craft Award
CRAFT VICTORIA, 2015
“New street. New city. The feeling of drifting is inevitable’
- Drifting Traces
Drifting Traces, 2014, Cattle horn, fine silver, copper, steel, rubber, epoxy (with fine silver granules and iron ore). Photo: Sara Retallick
As an emerging New Zealand jeweller living and making in Melbourne, this early work explored how to find ones voice within an unfamiliar cultural landscape, how to make work that doesn’t just talk about where one is from, but also where one actually is. These are fundamental questions of belonging,
for which contemporary jewellery has always offered answers, or at least suggestions. We look to ancestry, we look to friends, and bit-by-bit, we make up who we are. An interest in the body combined with a background in sculpture, textiles and fashion informs this work intuitively.
Drifting Traces, 2014, Cattle horn, fine silver, copper, steel, rubber, epoxy (with Rose buds and Calendula petals, chromium oxide and turmeric, green peppercorns and saffron threads, synthetic gemstones and faux Pukeko feathers, fine silver granules and iron ore). Photo: Sara Retallick
Certainly also, a rich cultural upbringing on New Zealand’s remote East Coast instilled an early respect and appreciation for natural resources and their ability to speak for themselves.
Through connections to the land and its stories, materials are also an instinctive choice, if not an autobiographical one.
Paired with precious metals, sustainable byproducts such as bone and horn form part of a conversation around both existing and traditional value systems. Drifting Traces muses on ephemeral states of living, of moving through a city, moving through time, shifting dust as you walk by, unsettling a leaf or a feather, stirring the air around you; the intangible evidence of being.
Victorian Craft Award
The Victorian Craft Awards celebrate excellence in contemporary craft practice by artisans across Victoria. Presenting a cutting-edge vision of craft in the 21st century, the Awards are an important survey of contemporary artistic approaches across a range of media. Showcasing exceptional levels of skill and
innovation, finalists represent the vitality of the flourishing contemporary Victorian craft sector. ‘Craft’ being defined as a skilled practice using ceramics, glass, textiles, wood, metal, fibre, or other materials to create experimental, contemporary or traditional works.
