​This is a pre Christmas exhibition with a difference. All of the works exhibited have been made from materials retreived from donated jewellery as a part of the Radical Jewellery Makeover.

The Radical Jewellery Makeover is an educational initiative of Ethical Metalsmiths and involves a call to the public to donate their unwanted jewellery. The donations are sorted and categorised to be deconstructed and become the raw materials to be reworked by a team of jewellers. The resulting works are heavily influenced by the donated materials, though the donors may no longer be able to recognise any elements of what they contributed. The jewellers get to work with materials they don't usually use and this proves an inspiration and challenge to develop new works that add value to the materials.

My contact with the Ethical Metalsmiths started in late 2006 when I emailed Christina Miller. I was in the process of making changes to the Jewellery Program at QCA and I was keen to talk to academics and researchers with shared interests. Christina was the first I found and we began conversing by email and mail. The conversations led to Christina and her collaborator Susie Ganch visiting QCA to host a Radical Jewellery Makeover in 2010. This was to be the first international RJM and the 4th in the ongoing series of the travelling community mining and recycling project that draws public attention to the creativity and skills of local jewellery designers, reveals the stories behind our personal collections and encourages re-consideration of our habits of consumption. I joined Susie and Christina to deliver an RJM in New Mexico in 2011. The 2016 Brisbane RJM is the second to be hosted in Australia and I have led it with the assistance of Clare Poppi a QCA Masters candidate. 

​The jewellers who are exhibiting RJM works in the current exhibition are: Alicia Lane, Alison Bruce, Catherine Large, Chloe Healy. Elizabeth Shaw, Juliana Platt, Katie Stormonth, Kierra-Jay Power, Lynda Shale, Melissa Stannard, Mia Wells, Nellie Peoples, Robyn Pell, Vivien Bedwell and Xiaohui Yang. Many more have been involved in the project. A big thank you to Lisa Brown from Faun Photography for documenting a lot of the jewellery made.

In 2009 Nick Ashby and I collaborated for an exhibition The Miniature Museum which we showed first at Blindside Melbourne and then at Metro Arts Gallery Brisbane. It was the first time we had publicly shown our collaborative works.

In 2016 The S.O.A.P collective made contact. They were curating an exhibition "Using a 'call and response' method of curation." We were two of many artists contacted who had exhibited at Blindside between 2004 and 2009. "The ‘call and response’ method addresses the challenges of working artists in Australia: the networks formed inside and outside the internet, the scarcity of cheap gallery space and the sparse public and private funds to remunerate artists." (2016 S.O.A.P Blindside Room Sheet).

For us, Ashby and Shaw, it was an interesting invitation to recieve. The Miniature Museum exhibition was so long ago, yet we had recently returned to some of the ideas the exhibition had explored.

The works we are exhibiting in Curtain Call represent our continued interest in collaboration, exploring new ways of working together. The three miniature portraits represent writers who have explored ideas about politics, sculpture and painting. Using images sourced online and transformed through interpretation and framing the three individuals are located in a personal domain, detached from their more ​familiar personas.

The full list of exhibiting ARTISTS - it was interesting to see the final list and great to be exhibiting with them.
​
Aly Aitken, David Akenson, Santina Amato, Rachel Ang, Jessie Angwin, Beth Arnold, Nick Ashby, Eleanor Avery, James Avery, Jill Barker, Selina Braine, Merric Brettle, Kiera Brew Kurec, Michele Burder, Ben Byrne, Kate Cotching, Bridget Currie, Anna Daly, Jared Davis, Julia Davis, Clare Humphries, Zoe De Luca, Rehgan De Mather, Kim Demuth, Hazel Dooney, Daniel Dorall, Craig Easton, Kel Glaister, Katya Grokhovsky, Michelle Hamer, Jim Hart, PJ Hickman, Stephanie Hicks, Joyce Huang, Amanda Johnson, Lisa Jones, Dena Kahan, Helen Kelly, Anusha Kenny, Susan Lincoln, Michael Lindeman, Natalya Maller, Amy Marjoram, Jessica McElhinney, Pamela See, Julie-Anne Milinski, David Mutch, Kirsten Perry, Debra Porch, Clare Rae, Steven Rendall, Mandy Ridley, Dunja Rmandic, Susan Robb, Giles Ryder, Elizabeth Shaw, Tai Snaith, Lisa Stewart, Andrew Tetzlaff, Jade Venus, Paul White, Jordan Wood, Sary Zananiri

OPENING DRINKS: Thursday 8 December 2016

THURSDAY 8 DEC 2016
6pm – 8pm

Level 7, Room 14, Nicholas Building 
37 Swanston Street, Melbourne 3000
BLINDSIDE.org.au

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