Photography: Grant Hancock

Video: Sylvia Nevistic

2018 - Collect Space, JamFactory Centre for Contemporary Craft, Adelaide, Australia

2019 - Courtesy of the Artist, Sydney, Australia. Irene Belfi Gallery, Milan, Italy.

Excerpt from catalogue

This collection of jewellery and objects are influenced by three of my favourite things, the decorative arts, poetry and Nature.

My love affair with Nature began as a child growing up in country New South Wales. My three siblings and I would spend all our free time outside; climbing trees, swimming in dams, just running a-muck. The only stipulation we were given from our mother was to come home before it got dark. My family and I would go fossicking in creeks and riverbeds during school holidays and what was found was usually Chinese or English bottles, some ceramic and glass.

Poetry came a little later, when I studied at University. I remember my facilitator at the time telling me that I could express my learning in any way I felt drawn to, I started to write poetry and that’s when I was introduced to poets such as Keats, Browning, Byron and then I was hooked. In my twenties I recall visiting my sister in Melbourne and picking up this beautiful little poetry book she had on her coffee table, ‘Neath Blue Skies, I asked if I could borrow it and I kind of forgot to give it back to her. Last year when I was thinking about having a show I found the book and couldn’t put it down, I was particularly drawn to this statement “Nature never gives everything at once” and these words became the catalyst for this new work.

I have made porcelain vessels, mostly bottle forms, that are adorned with silver and gold jewellery. I want those looking at the work to not quite know what they are looking at, but when they get closer, pick up the piece, turn it over in their hands realise it’s not what they initially thought; embodying a sense of surprise and wonder, with hidden secrets that I hope will delight the viewer, piquing their interest and curiosity.

Rhythm and repetition feature heavily in the jewellery pieces, in particular the use of a granule or a dot repeated over and over. When I go for my wanderings in Nature I am fascinated by the the ‘macro ecology’, the things most people might overlook, I seek out those tiny details, like the trail a snail makes on the ground or how a creature bores holes into a perfectly bleached white shell. The kinetic aspect of the jewellery references movement in Nature but also the fluidity of a well written poem. The sheer joy of wearing a piece of jewellery that ‘jingles and jangles’ while you walk reminds you of your presence in that very moment, just like “the rolling rock that leaves its scratches on the mountain”, thank you Emerson.