Jewellery Box Brendon Monson 27 Nov-22 Dec 2013

The Colonial Machine series has emerged from Monsons interest in the ongoing challenges of bi-cultural politics and this series of work examines the construction and expression of Pakeha identity though jewellery. He uses stone and metal in his work, bringing together materials representing both settler and Maori cultures.

The pulleys in his jewellery provide playfulness and a metaphoric link to early European industries; as much as the stone does to pre-European technology. They are objects of fictional antiquity, artifacts of a harmonious bi-cultural society, which doesn't fully exist in reality.