Exhibitions
Events
On display
Otto Künzli: The Jewellery Zoo - Born to be Worn or Lost in Showcases?
Talk
Past event
Philip Carter Family Auditorium
Free
Renowned Swiss contemporary jeweller Otto Künzli will talk about some of the projects he has undertaken with his students, who are now some of the world’s top contemporary jewellers.
From 1991 until 2014 renowned contemporary jeweller Otto Künzli headed the contemporary jewellery department for the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. This prestigious school produced some of the world’s most celebrated contemporary jewellers , including Lisa Walker and Karl Fritsch of New Zealand. Over his 23 year tenure, Künzli and his students created over 40 different installations that presented their work to the public in interesting, uncommon and attracting ways. His lecture will reflect on some these projects. Künlzi says:
It is easy to say that jewellery is actually only true jewellery when it fulfils its destiny to be worn. For instance to enhance the presence of a person. But in order to find people who would like to wear our works we have to reach out, we need to go public. This commonly happens by exhibiting our works. For a painting it is natural to be hung on a nail on the wall, for a sculpture to sit on the ground, a video to be projected on a screen etc. What is natural for a piece of jewellery? Is it to rest in a showcase? Is that all we can do?
Künzli is one of the most influential jewellers working today. The Swiss-trained, Munich-based artist is the creator of some of the most iconic examples of contemporary jewellery including 1cm of Love (1995) and Gold Makes Blind (1995). Künzli’s minimalist, yet meticulously crafted work references cultural phenomena, utilising the power of metaphor and iconography with wit and sophistication.
In March 2013 Künzli’s major retrospective titled The Exhibition showcased his extensive oeuvre and was accompanied by The Book, a comprehensive catalogue documenting a career spanning over 40 years.
Related reading: Talk, Jewellery, Free event
Exhibition
Lisa Walker: 0 + 0 = 0
16 December 2016 – 2 April 2017
New works by an internationally acclaimed New Zealand jeweller.
Notes
Aotearoa
A texture-rich new exhibition at Oxford showcases the considerable talents of six Canterbury artists.
Notes
Host a brooch
A number of Gallery staff are planning to take part in the final Host a Brooch event this weekend.
Artist Profile
Lisa Walker: 0 + 0 = 0
It might be tempting to say that Lisa Walker makes jewellery out of any old thing – but it isn’t true. The eclectic objects that form her distinctive necklaces, brooches and other body-adornments are meticulously selected and shrewdly modified before they see the light of day. She salvages her materials from an unlikely cornucopia of sources – re-presenting objects such as car parts, animal skins and even kitchen utensils through the frame of body adornment’s long history. Tiny Lego hats, helmets and hairpieces – of the kind that clog vacuum cleaner nozzles in children’s bedrooms around the world – are strung on finely plaited cords like exotic beads or shells; trashy gossip magazines are lashed together to yield a breastplate befitting our celebrity-obsessed culture; dozens of oboe reeds donated by a musician friend bristle round the wearer’s neck like the teeth of some unimaginable deep sea leviathan.
Article
The pleasure of making: objects taking centre stage in the space of the art gallery
Was it serendipity that the opening of Christchurch Art Gallery's Burster Flipper Wobbler Dripper Spinner Stacker Shaker Maker coincided with that of Slip Cast, a group exhibition at the Dowse Art Museum that also focused on the pleasure that artists take in manipulating materials in the process of making art?
Collection
Fiona Pardington Mauria mai, tono ano
The title of this work means ‘to bring to light, to claim again’. The seven heitiki (greenstone pendants) Fiona Pardington has photographed came originally from her iwi, Kāi Tahu, in Te Waipounamu. All are now held in the collection of Auckland Museum. Traditionally worn close to the heart, heitiki are sacred fertility symbols in te ao Māori, strongly associated with whakapapa (family connections across time). Fiona not only wanted to record the physical attributes of these old and precious objects, but also to capture their more intangible qualities, such as how they speak of the past and this place, despite being stored so far away.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
