Exhibitions Archive - Australasia & Pacific
Australia
World of Wonder: Margot McKinney
With a lifetime dedicated to luxury, Australian jewellery designer Margot McKinney is one of the world’s boldest talents. The very definition of timeless elegance and bespoke excellence, Margot’s extraordinary pieces are a celebration of the world’s rarest gems.
From the coral reef in our own backyard to the rich palette of colours found on safari in Tanzania, this exhibition will be a mesmerising celebration of the complex and profoundly beautiful environments and materials that have inspired her designs. Here you’ll find opulent opals, lustrous pearls and rare gems like the intensely blue tanzanite, lilac amethyst and pink tourmalines.
This is the fourth exhibition in MoB’s identity series that celebrates creative greats who call Brisbane home. Join us as we journey through a treasure trove of memories and mastery and let Margot’s designs and inspiration transport you to a world of wonder.
18/06/2022 – 6/11/2022
Museum of Brisbane, Level 3, Brisbane City Hall, 64 Adelaide St, Brisbane 4000, Australia
Masters: Art of the Precious Metal Object
Introducing Masters: Art of the Precious Metal Object – an Australian premiere exhibition showcasing spectacular design, exceptional works and authentic practice from eleven masters of contemporary Australian goldsmithing, silversmithing and enamelling. Guest curated by the award winning Gold and Silversmith, Victoria Edgar – Masters: Art of the Precious Metal Object will reveal the exquisite artistry and contemporary craftsmanship in jewellery making in Australia today. Learn from the Masters… only at the National Wool Museum.
14/09/2018 - 29/01/2019
National Wool Museum, 26 Moorabool Street, Geelong, Victoria, Australia
BLING. 19th Century Goldfields jewellery
An enchanting exhibition of lavish Australian gold jewellery, 19th Century BLING explores little known parts of history and the impact of the unique designs on the socio political landscape of Australia and beyond. The jewellery created for miners (diggers) and their families when they struck gold was ostentatious, and often incorporated non-traditional emblems like the mining tools they used including picks, shovels, spades, pistols, sluices and pans. It was the “bling” of its day and represented diggers’ claims for legitimacy and power. M.A.D.E has gathered over 200 rare, fascinating and exquisite pieces of Australian goldfields jewellery for this unique exhibition. Showcased are significant jewels and objects, including key international examples, from 1851 to 1901. Explore untold stories of Australia’s social history through these glittering survivors from a golden era.
16/04/2016 - 4/07/2016
Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka (M.A.D.E.), 102 Stawell St South, Ballarat, Victoria, 3350, Australia
Lustre: Pearling and Australia
From a fossil pearl shell 125,000 years old to modern lustrous pearl jewellery, Lustre: Pearling and Australia weaves together the diverse strands of Australia’s pearling heritage. Lustre traces pearling across the north of Australia, from Shark Bay to the Torres Strait Islands. It reveals the natural world, the traditions of Aboriginal Australians who have harvested pearl shell for over 20,000 years, and the complex and enduring relationships of the people who made and defined the pearling industry. Lustre was curated in a partnership between the Western Australian Museum and Nyamba Buru Yawuru. The exhibition is sponsored by Visions of Australia.
20/08/2016 - 22/01/2017
Immigration Museum, 400-424 Flinders Street, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
Pensieri preziosi 9 - Gioielleria contemporanea australiana
For decades the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Padua has been involved in promoting and enhancing the evolution and development of contemporary research jewellery from a historical-critical point of view, not just Italian jewellery but also international pieces, opening up debates and discussions on artists from different Schools and cultural environments. This year the Pensieri Preziosi exhibition, which has been designed and curated by Mirella Cisotto Nalon now reaching its ninth year, presents the Australian Goldsmithing School that trained at the RMIT University of Melbourne. This exhibition allows visitors to get to know, appreciate and examine highly original works created by eight specially chosen artists, Prof. Robert Baines - Head of School - along with Nicholas Bastin, Simon Cottrell, Kirsten Haydon, Linda Hughes, Milbourne Christopher, Nicole Polentas and Katherine Wheeler, who have studied at the most important University of Design on the continent of Australia, under the guidance of Prof. Baines.
30/11/2013 – 23/02/2014
Oratorio di San Rocco, via S. Lucia - Padova, Italy
Treasury Australia - Australia Treasure room
This exhibition brings together Australian Treasury in the premises of two exhibitions. This part is the work of Prof. Dr. Robert Baines. Dr. Robert Baines, Director of Research and Innovation at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology dedicated. Its Treasure of Evidence, or treasury of the evidence points to the possibilities of jewelry and its cultural, social and political allusions. He combines artisanal detail and technical expertise in the footsteps of the great goldsmiths of ancient, medieval and Renaissance themes of our time and a critical perspective.
26/02/2010 - 10/04/2010
Galerie Handwerk, Munich, Germany
Blanche Tilden—ripple effect: a 25 year survey
target="blank">dowse.org.nz/exhibitions/detail/wild-domain-the-natural-history-of-jane-dodd-jewelThis 25 year survey of the work of Melbourne-based jeweller and maker Blanche Tilden reveals her remarkable and critically acclaimed practice. Tilden has a unique approach to her materials, in particular, glass, which she explores both as a material for jewellery making and deploys as a metaphor for the connections between making, industry, the wearable object and the body. Her fascination with mechanical devices, fuelled by a desire to understand how things work, continually inspires her work. This first comprehensive survey of Tilden’s career includes historical and contemporary works loaned from numerous public and private collections. Tilden has reinterpreted previous work to create new forms that expand on her preoccupations with value, mechanical movement, and industrial and architectural uses of glass, translating something of the macro immensity of the built and material world to the intimacy of the jewellery object.
8/05/2021 - 1/08/2021
Geelong Gallery, Little Malop Street, Geelong 3220, Australia
New Zealand
Jewellery from Aotearoa New Zealand
New Zealand jewellery is seen in the wider world as a free spirit that turns away from convention and description.
Obviously, the work comes from makers who connects to their ideas, and those ideas occur from the two islands in the middle of the Pacific, far away from the accumulation of common institutional conventions.
New Zealand history is built upon pioneering spirits. Its contemporary jewellery history is still traceable with most artists still active. In this exhibition are a few of those pioneering spirits who showed inspiring ways throughout their careers.
7/11/2021 – 1/03/2022
Galerie Marzee, Lage Markt 3 6511 VK Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Wild Domain: The Natural History of Jane Dodd Jewellery
Representing the first major survey of Ōtepoti Dunedin-based jeweller Jane Dodd’s expanding family of works; this exhibition delves into her examination of humankind’s impact on the natural world. Featuring over 100 pieces from museum and private collections, this is a whirlwind tour of Dodd’s critical, humorous and touching journey to help us recognise our intrinsic relationship to nature and the planet we all share. Each work takes on a life of its own, that when combined with a wearer’s memories and associations, builds a story and a system of interconnected links. Together, these many components form, what has become, The Natural History of Jane Dodd Jewellery.
20/02/2021 - 27/06/2021
The Dowse Art Museum, 45 Laings Road, Lower Hutt, PO Box 30396, 5040, New Zealand
Wunderrūma: New Zealand Jewellery
This exhibition brings together over 200 pieces by more than 75 contemporary New Zealand jewellers and artists as well as Māori taonga and Pacific and historical European jewellery. The title ‘Wunderrūma’ plays with the German word Wunderkammer (wonder room or cabinet of curiosities) and the Māori transliteration of the word ‘room’. While contemporary jewellery is the centre of the exhibition, historical, customary, fine art and industrial sources which parallel and influence this are also included.
21/06/2014 - 28/09/2014
The Dowse Art Museum, 45 Laings Road, Lower Hutt, New Zealand
18/07/2015 - 1/11/2015
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Corner Kitchener and Wellesley Streets, Auckland, New Zealand
Cluster
This exhibition presents work by ten contemporary New Zealand jewellers collected by The Dowse over the last ten years. Lisa Walker, Karl Fritsch, Kirsten Haydon, Joanna Campbell, Jacqui Chan, Anna Wallis, Lynn Kelly, Jason Hall, Ann Visser Cox and Pauline Bern use a diverse range of materials as they challenge traditional notions of body adornment. The exhibition showcases the evolution of contemporary jewellery practice during that past decade and presents a wide range of object making. Unbounded by the traditions of jewellery and its conventional association with precious materials, wearability and the relationship to the body, these artists forge new directions in their work.
11/02/2012 - 13/05/2012
The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, New Zealand
Karl Fritsch: Freeling
I will be showing my first ‘made in New Zealand’ pieces. I’ve just built my own workshop in Wellington and am still keen to build more things. I like it. I like the DIY mentality – everybody has a project around the house and it doesn’t matter how skilled you are; you just do it. You might fail but then you can just fix it again. There’s usually a good amount of making things fit that do not really fit. Materials get reinterpreted for a new use and the project becomes a creation and a statement in itself: the serendipity of DIY.
8/06/2010 - 3/07/2010
Gallery Funaki, Melbourne, Australia
1839 Exchanges - Jewellery by Jason Hall
Since 1998 artist Jason Hall has been questioning what it means to be Pakeha. This exhibition, curated by Damian Skinner, is about jewellery, identity and cultural exchange. It features a series of amulets created by Hall ‘for’ Frederick Edward Maning, an Irishman who arrived in Aotearoa in 1833. Hall’s works draw a parallel between the meaning of the amulet and the tension that sits at the heart of settler societies.
19/12/2009 - 21/02/2010
Rotorua Museum, New Zealand
Pocket Guide to New Zealand Jewelry
During the Second World War, American troops in New Zealand were issued a concise guide to familiarize themselves with the country in which they were stationed. Five decades later, the Pocket Guide to New Zealand Jewelry continues this tradition of cultural exchange, introducing a new generation of Americans to contemporary jewelry made, as the original guide put it, "deep in the heart of the south seas."
13/01/2010 - 28/02/2010
Velvet da Vinci, San Francisco CA, USA
Talisman
Talismans are found in many cultures throughout the world. In this exhibition twelve contemporary New Zealand jewellery artists have made new work responding to the enduring power of the talisman. The inclusion of twelve rare and important historic talismans from Canterbury Museum's Oceanic collection highlights an exchange across times and cultures, and reinforces not only the connections between jewellery and the body, science, magic and nature, but also the idea that jewellery accrues meaning through use.
5/12/2009 - 14/02/2010
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, Christchurch, New Zealand
Areta Wilkinson: Waka Huia
Waka Huia is a treasure trove of precious jewellery, objects, and stories created by leading New Zealand jeweller Areta Wilkinson. The exhibition explores Wilkinson’s return to her spiritual home of Ngai Tahu, and reflects the cultural landscapes through which she travels. Wilkinson has developed a new element of Waka Huia for HBMAG viewers. These works adopt the tradition of carte de visite: travel photographs of family and loved ones. Wilkinson’s pictorial devices relate through whakapapa and legend, unlocking deeper narratives for the objects of Waka Huia. It is an exciting time to be working with Areta Wilkinson, one of this country’s leading Maori artists, who is fresh from receiving one of New Zealand’s most prestigious awards for contemporary jewellery – The New Dowse Gold Award.
17/10/2009 - 14/03/2010
Hawke's Bay Museum and Art Gallery, Napier, New Zealand
Pocket Guide to New Zealand Jewelry
During the Second World War, American troops in New Zealand were issued a concise guide to familiarize themselves with the country in which they were stationed. Five decades later, the Pocket Guide to New Zealand Jewelry continues this tradition of cultural exchange, introducing a new generation of Americans to contemporary jewelry made, as the original guide put it, "deep in the heart of the south seas."
13/01/2010 - 28/02/2010
Velvet da Vinci, San Francisco CA, USA
Made in Aotearoa: Jewellery by Alan Preston
This exhibition showcases one of New Zealand’s greatest artisans, whose desire to create a “jewellery of this place” saw him spearhead a movement in favour of materials from Aotearoa and the Pacific. In the late 1970s Alan Preston abandoned western jewellery making traditions in favour of locally found materials and techniques. From delicate shell necklaces to politically charged sovereignty badges, Preston began crafting beautiful objects with symbolic meaning. The exhibition features some of his most riveting work, much of it influenced and discovered between the tides and inspired by artefacts at Auckland Museum.
7/03/2009 - 31/05/2009
Auckland Museum, Auckland, New Zealand
Pacific
Ho‘olaulole: The Joy of Wearable Art
Inspired by Maori artist-in-residence Donna Campbell and coordinated by Hawaiian artist Maile Andrade, this exhibition features full body adornment (from clothing to jewelry) by Native Hawaiian visual art students and some of the most cutting-edge artists of today.
13/11/2009 - 18/04/2010
Bishop Museum, Honolulu, USA