RADICAL LOCALISM IS A TOURING EXHIBITION OF JEWELLERY & OBJECTS BY ELIZABETH SHAW CURATED BY CASSANDRA LEHMAN (ARTISAN QUEENSLAND).

Lehman has drawn jewellery and objects from decades of my studio practice. Her installation mixes works from various periods and in doing so draws attention to constant and related interests that have permeated my studio thinking. 

The Opening event is 6pm Friday 4 February 2022.
Floor talk and morning tea 10am Sunday 6 February.
Further details are available here 

I was happy to have two of my bracelets selected for inclusion in Nicolas Estrada's new book New Bracelets. This is the fourth book in the series, it was preceded by New Brooches, New Rings and New Necklaces. 
​ISBN: 9788417412500

My works included are Nail head Bracelet, found nails, steel wire, reused sterling silver and Links Bracelet (bone), found metal (assorted washers and bits with holes), reused and recycled sterling silver. Thank you to Michelle Bowden @visuall for taking the print quality photos.

The book is now available in Australia from Australian distributors Booktopia and at quality bookshops.

The necklace worn by Michelle Obama while addressing the Democratic National Convention — a fine gold chain spelling out the word VOTE in spaced, sans serif letters — has gone viral.
Made by a small company owned by Chari Cuthbert, the necklace was designed“for powerhouse women who let their voices be heard, especially at the polls”.
Using jewellery to communicate a message is neither new or unusual. Archaeologists have described finding body adornments as “the closest thing to finding prehistoric thought.” Most jewellery, whether a ring or a medal or a badge, is visible to others and thus an expression of the wearer and their status.
But Obama’s is the latest in a long line of celebrated examples of jewellery as a political device: from suffragettes’ medals to Madeleine Albright’s pins. Even brooches worn by Queen Elizabeth have been read by some as political statements.
This is from an article I wrote for The Conversation. It was published August 25, 2020 6.05am AEST you can read the rest of the article  here

Why Jewellery? 2 is the second in a series of exchange exhibitions between Queensland College of Art Griffith University and Hong Kong Baptist University. The exhibition features works from staff and selected current third year students and recent graduates who responded to the question "Why Jewellery?". The idea for the exhibition developed following conversations I had with Dr Ching Sze Yin, Cicy the head of the Jewellery studio when I was visiting HKBU. We held the first exhibition in the series in 2015, the Why-Jewellery? website has images and information from both exhibitions.

I see Why Jewellery? as an important prompt for our students and graduates to interrogate their ideas about jewellery through their own work and through viewing that of their peers. It is a great opportunity to exhibit their works in an international exhibition and to develop a understanding of other artists' motivations.   

The exhibition opened in the Project Gallery at QCA on 14 June, and despite heavy rain, and the university break, the exhibition attracted a good crowd. 

When I was 5 I wrote and illustrated a story called "The Praty" sic. I am pretty sure that praty was my 5 year old way of spelling party. Or at least the way the story progresses that is what I understand.

There is something about this small element of my past that has inspired several works over the years. In 1996 for an exhibition of artists books curated by Frank McBride at the Brisbane City Gallery (now Museum of Brisbane) I reproduced the illustrated story in a copper book.

Sometime also in the late 1990's I worked with reproducing some of the characters from the story in silver.  I didn't resolve what I was going to do with them. They still linger around my work bench waiting to be resolved.

Around 2005 I printed the characters in black on unbleached linen tea towels. I gave these to members of my family. Around 2000 I made a series of reusable black shopping bags with the character printed in white, these were again given to my family. 

Now in 2017 the characters have appeared in Creature Earrings and on oven mitts. The Creature earrings were included in JMGQs two April Pop Up Shops at Papermoon  and an Oven Mitt – featuring a creature from my childhood was exhibited in BusyBrick's embroidery exhibition Prick also in April.

​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

GALLERY OPEN
Tuesday to Saturday, 12pm–6pm
Closed on public holidays

TELEPHONE
(+61 3) 9650 0093
EMAIL
info@BLINDSIDE.org.au

I was fortunate to be able to both attend and participate in the one day conference Flux - Fair Luxury held at the Goldsmiths' Centre London on 19 April 2016. ​I was so impressed that the conference sold out in 2 weeks and had a waiting list of 30 people! The keen interest hopefully allayed any fears the organisers may have had about the importance of the event. 

This was the inaugural conference organised by the Flux team and it was very well received. The enthusiasm and sense of optimism at the event was palpable. The hard work and ambitions of the Flux team saw their idea for the conference become a reality. I suspect it all moved too fast for each of them to fully appreciate their achievements. The day covered lots of different approaches and ideas towards improving the environmental and ethical standards of the jewellery industry.

Orsola de Castro, Co Founder of the Fashion Revolution Day talked about her evolution into a Fair Fashion activist with enthusiasm and drive. Her approach was accessible and based on the discussion that ensued, quite possibly (hopefully) infectious. 

Lina Villa, Executive Director of Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM) talked about the origins of ARM and how she and the alliance had been developing and changing.

Interestingly the idea of a journey was used by several speakers and I think that allowed for the room for all to understand that there wasn't an absolute we are all aiming for at this moment. It is very much a journey.

When I started my practice in the early 1990s producing jewellery and tableware in small scale production my aim was to be environmentally friendly. I used a lot of metal retrieved from waste. I used cardboard unbleached packaging that could be recycled or would biodegrade. This was in part because I had a strong dislike for flocked plastic jewellery boxes and bags. My clients at the time were never as excited about my unbleached packaging as I thought they should/would be. 

It was around 2000 when I was rethinking my practice undertaking masters research that I started to think about other aspects of my studio practice, the chemicals I used for example and the stones I was using. I started to think that stones being natural was not enough, I needed to know where they had come from and how they were sourced. It has definitely been a journey for me in terms of understanding my priorities and reconsidering all aspects of my studio practices. This is an ongoing process.

In the second session of workshops I was involved with leading one with Peter Crump from Vipa Designs and Samantha Rose from September Rose.
​We covered:
What are the challenges of responsible sourcing from the perspective of:
·        education, (working with new students)
·        manufacturing, (working with designers looking to upscale their business to sustainable level)
·        designer-maker, (working through the practical issues of responsible sourcing)
Peter, Samantha and had been in contact with me by email, it was great to meet them face to face on the day. I think we were well selected to present together. Our approaches were complementary and we received some great questions.

I hope this will be just the start of our conversation. ​

Garland Magazine was launched late last year as an online magazine "to encourage a dialogue across the Asia Pacific about the objects that give our lives meaning." Kevin Murray, Olivia Pintos-Lopez and Damien Wright are the editorial team members. The first issue published articles from 30 writers covering a wide range of perspectives in relation to thinking about craft.

I recommend having a read and I also suggest you consider subscribing - it isn't essential to access Garland, but it will support this important initiative.

Annual subscriptions, are affordable at $AUD 40, and enable special access to the quarterly essays. Subscriptions go towards commissioning future essays and supporting cultural dialogue around what we make.

You'll find Garland Magazine here

In association with the launch of Garland Magazine, the inaugural online exhibition Intimate Imensities was launched. Above is the picture of my work included in the exhibition.

The exhibition was curated by Olivia Pintos-Lopez, and brings together works from 23 artists from the Asia Pacific in the virtual online gallery.  The artists are: Susan Robey | Ian Mowbray | Rosa Hawker | Varuni Kanagasundaram | Damien Wright | Anna Gray | Andrew Stinear | Nalda Searles | Amelina Trainor | Andrew Baldwin | Andrea Mina | Caroline Baum | Clare McCracken | Vicki Mason | Julie Blyfield | Elizabeth Shaw | Paola Moreno | WALKA | this.means.that studio | Melissa Cameron | Trudy Golley | Inup Park | Juree Kim

Here is the callout for the next exhibition:

Calling Second Home - exhibition for Garland #2 
While home is something many of us take for granted, it is fact of life, if not history, that we will change our primary shelter. Human, animal and plant life is littered with discarded shells. Techniques can evolve to re-purpose these, such as the shell money from the Solomon Islands, that is arranged in beautiful necklaces. To explore the creative uses of real and metaphoric shells, Garland is calling for works to its next online exhibition, Second Home. See here for more details.