By Ron Cerabona
Macrocosmia by Elizabeth Kelly and Mark Making: Bench by Andy Lowrie, Nellie Peoples, Clare Poppi, Katie Stormonth. Craft ACT. Until August 18.
Macrocosmia exhibition Overview, Elizabeth Kelly, at Craft ACT.Credit: 5foot Photography
Elizabeth Kelly’s three large sculptural spheres in glass glow with jewel-like colours that suggest the effect of light in medieval stained glass. Kelly studied the use of coloured glass in architecture during a study tour of America and Europe on a Churchill Scholarship in 2011. Each of her spheres -Dusky Sphere, Oceania Sphere and Helio’s Sphere - were created by joining numerous triangular shaped glass sections of pressed glass together in a complex geometric structure.
The raised surface of the pointed glass sections catches the light, bringing a richness and intensity to the colour palette of reds, mauves and blues. Each sphere is cradled in a cylindrical steel frame that allows it to be freestanding.
However, I can imagine them as being more ethereal and less earthbound, perhaps as floating sculptures suspended in a large architectural space where the intricacy of their construction and the play of coloured light across their surfaces, could be fully realised.
Kelly has always taken a conceptual approach to her work and this current exhibition relates to past projects where she has created large scale sculptural towers in glass.
Elizabeth Kelly, Helio\'s Sphere, 2018, in Macrocosmia at Craft ACT.
The Macrocosmia project – several years in the making - has arisen out of the artist’s continued interest in architectural design and is based on Kelly’s intensive research into fields of spherical geometry and the study of organisms at a microcosmic level.
The four artists in the Mark Making exhibition are members of Bench, an artist-run workshop in Brisbane founded in 2012. Andy Lowrie, its original co-founder, has now left to pursue his career overseas. Nellie Peoples, Clare Poppi and Katie Stormouth are current members.
Andy Lowrie constructs jewellery and objects in metal and wood. He paints these constructions in neutral white paint that he rubs back revealing the dark metal surface beneath emphasising its form and texture. In some works he uses the natural grain of the wood, highlighted with scribbly drawn lines that personalise the object through mark making. These marks establish a link between the artist and the wearer as well as referring to the function of jewellery as body adornment. These brooches and pendants are made to be worn as jewellery. They are seen by the artist as personal talismans or tokens but they could also have another life as kept objects.
Nellie Peoples is originally from Canberra and now works in Brisbane. Her current work is imbued with a personal sense of memory and place. This is conveyed by a personal system of mark making that anchors her Bifocal series of round-lipped brooches and the Horizon series of wooden segmented necklaces to places of special significance to the artist in Canberra and Brisbane. The Bifocal series of brooches in copper and sterling silver are etched and pierced with the marks of the landscape while the timber necklaces relate to Canberra through the use of local reclaimed wood.
Clare Poppi’s Growing Jewellery series is certainly innovative. The Seed Bomb Necklaces are paired necklaces. The first necklace of each pair is made from clay `beads’ impregnated with seeds that can be crumbled into the earth to grow and the second necklace includes a beautifully crafted silver `mould’. The `mould’ necklace can be worn solely as jewellery or used to create new `seed bombs’. Some of the other jewellery items are especially challenging.
Clare Poppi, Growing Brooch, 2017, in Mark Making: Bench at Craft ACT.Credit: Faun Photography
In the Growing series, tender little miniature plants are growing in delicate silver receptacles. These are made into pendants, earrings and brooches. If you decide to own one of these pieces you will then have to decide whether you are prepared to give the plants the attention they need. The question is - what happens if the plants die? Will you be able to wear the jewellery that testifies to your gardening neglect or will you be able to surreptitiously replant your receptacle and pretend all is well? The onus will be on you.
Katie Stormonth’s jewellery is part of a larger body of work, Blended modes and mediums, where the artist begins with a repertoire of materials, shapes and textures to create a body of work. The bright green frond-like shapes and the use of bamboo in one set of brooches gives the artist’s work a brightness and freshness that seems to reflect Queensland’s tropical landscapes as do the large fecund flower-like shapes of her brightly coloured flower brooches.
The exhibition presents a well-considered body of work by these young artists. It engenders respect for their skill, intellectual approach and thoughtfulness that is shown in their work as well as in the way in which they have organised and arranged the exhibition in the gallery space so clearly to their own design.