by example バイ・エグザンプル PROJECTS

By Example: Australian Contemporary Jewellery
13 – 28 March 2010
Museum of arts and Crafts Itami Japan

“By Example presents a view of Australian contemporary jewellery through the lens of the process of learning… This exhibition brings together fourteen leading jewellery artists, exemplars of their discipline, and places alongside each of them two artists with whom they have worked and have selected as evolving talents in their field”
Dr Karin Findeis and Bridie Lander

Carlier Makigawa + Leah Teschendorff + Simon Cottrell

I am currently making objects and jewellery fabricated from mild steel, silver and zinc, that draw their inspiration from botanical sources. Strip the colour and scent away from flowers and what remains is a pure form that allows other associations, the symbolic, the metaphorical, to emerge. Contemplate root systems beyond their obvious biological function and they also become forms ripe with potential meaning, connotations and significance. In observing plants as they ‘live’, their transformations and metamorphosis, their transience can be read as metaphors for fundamental aspects of human existence — life-changes, growth, renewal; senescence and decline at the same time. Observance of them can function allegorically, as a fixed but partially hidden visual reference ‘readable’ in way relevant to human feeling, doubt and emotion. The work I make is concerned with notions surrounding metamorphosis and growth: literal, emotional, spiritual, physical, and the visual representation and expression of these ideas.

Leah Teschendorff