Collections

A+M Workshop

A+M Workshop

In 2019 jewellers Debbie Adamson and Craig McIntosh set up a shared workshop in Central Dunedin (Aotearoa New Zealand), where they began manufacturing a collective output under the moniker A+M. Described by the pair as ‘benchworks’, these pieces of jewellery are designed and fabricated by both makers in a non-hierarchical fashion, with the intention of being well considered, wearable, and reproducible.

Like any collaboration, the process of resolution involves navigation between distinctive points of view, and so it would seem fitting that the compass has become a shared emblem for the starting point – a tool to orientate as the pair begin this body of work.

A+M is an evolving project, with new pieces released as and when they are developed, and originated from conversations about the history of studio craft in New Zealand, in which small scale production plays a key role.

 “A good piece of bread and butter work (if you want to use those terms) is quite capable of being as good as any show pony if not better, for that fact.”1

‘....at its best neither mindless nor barren’2

 

 

 

1 Warwick Freeman, as said in “Cultural Icons” interview with Damien Skinner, https://culturalicons.co.nz/63-warwick-freeman/

2 Damien skinner, on Kobi Bosshards ethos behind the same but different exhibition. Skinner & Murray, “Place and

Adornment”, 2014.

                                   

Aaron Scythe

Aaron Scythe

Aaron Scythe trained at Carrington Polytech in 1988 and East Sydney Polytech in 1989 where he developed an interest in Momoyama pots. In 1993 whilst working at Sturt Craft Centre in Mittagong, NSW Australia, Scythe built an Anagama kiln and began investigating Shino glazes.

In 1995 Scythe travelled to Japan to study the Minoyaki style of pottery and studied under Koie Ryoji.

Since 1997 and up until 2011 he had been based in Mashiko, Japan. During this period he developed Oribe and Kizeto ware, built another Anagama kiln to produce Shino ware and began making porcelain work. Whilst in Japan Scythe had over 60 solo shows and participated in many group shows and workshops.

Due to the Fukushima meltdown in 2011 Scythe and his family relocated to New Zealand. He is currently based in Te Aroha and has started to explore English slipware methods. Informed by research into theories of making, his working methods are always changing.

Alice Alva

Alice Alva

Alice Alva is a multi-disciplinary visual artist and designer based in Kirikiriroa/ Hamilton, New Zealand, who works across drawing and illustration, embroidery and textiles, painting and graphic design.
Her work is informed by an interest in patterns, ornamentation, architecture and craft-based processes. Alva has exhibited her work across Australia and New Zealand, including Wallace Gallery, Toi Poneke, RM Gallery and Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s Rear Window Project. She has been a finalist in the Wallace Art Prize, Parkin Drawing Prize and this year’s Molly Morpeth Canaday Painting and Drawing Prize. Her work can be found in private and public collections including Waikato Museum and Wallace Arts Trust.

Artist statement
I am drawn to the laborious process employed by traditional embroidery, textiles and craft techniques and driven by the obsessive act of repetition. This series of works are part of an on-going investigation which explores connection, memory, love, loss - the intimate moments associated with soft textiles. These pieces are a reminder of cloth's role as a threshold between our inner and outer worlds. I am interested in the relationships that we form with and within cloth fibres, whether it’s a favourite t-shirt, an decorative doily embroidered from a great-grandmother, or a jersey worn by a lover, textiles as objects can act as a substitute for missing our beloved or memories from past lives.’ 

Andy Kingston

Andy Kingston

Andy Kingston is a contemporary ceramic artist, based in Northland. He says of his work:
Pottery is often viewed as a 'low' art, a hobby craft or a cheap tourist commodity. Also, pots are a common and familiar object we use every day, often with little regard for. In these contexts, pottery provides a good standpoint from which to celebrate naivety and amateurism. These traits appeal to me as they have a certain honesty and gentle humour.

The ordinary and sometimes tragic idioms of the common pot provide a huge dichotomy of ideas to work with. My work is rooted in this ideology and is constantly growing and evolving.'

Ann Robinson

Ann Robinson

Ann Robinson is a leading cast glass artist both in New Zealand and internationally. Her work has been exhibited widely, and is held in a large number of prestigious collections worldwide. Robinson is considered a pioneer of the lost wax casting technique and is sought after as a teacher and lecturer on this subject. Her mastery of the technique has given her outstanding control of the medium and has seen her organically influenced vessels and sculptural forms become increasingly refined over time.

Robinson is considered to be one of the international masters of cast glass, and as well as exhibiting and teaching throughout New Zealand she has been invited to take part in residency, teaching and exhibition programmes in Australia, Japan, USA and Europe. Several exhibitions have played major roles in the development of her career, notably her inclusion in the Treasures of the Underworld at the World Expo in Seville (1992) in which she was challenged to create works much larger and heavier than previously. This lead to technical developments which have allowed her to overcome issues of mass and scale in her current work and have provided guidelines from which the majority of New Zealand cast glass artists have followed in the creation of large works. Her survey exhibition Casting Light, which was toured from the Dowse Museum of Art in 1998, broke new ground in the New Zealand art community by being the first exhibition of 'craft art' to be accepted and featured in the New Gallery in Auckland.

Robinson's works embody a feeling of grace and beauty which is highly developed and sophisticated in its approach to line, colour and form. Increasingly her newer pieces challenge the benchmarks of form and scale laid down by her earlier works, particularly in the series of oversized native leaves and pods, works which move away from the traditions of the vessel to which she has adhered to for much of her career.

Ara Dolatian

Ara Dolatian

Artist Statement 2023
The work examines the cultural ecologies surrounding lost and stolen artefacts in the Al-Jazira region, commonly called Mesopotamia, which lies between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Through tangible and visual means, it serves as a vivid representation of sculptural deities, architectural forms, and vessels lost to time. Rather than replicating the pieces, the intention is to draw inspiration from them. The resulting eccentric forms boast unique colour schemes, pleasing curves, and delicate edges, inspired by archaeological figures and decayed architectural sites. 

 I seek to reinstate some of this lost history, while at the same time highlighting the fragmented nature of its archives. The work also pays homage to clay, the foundational material used and skillfully developed in ancient Mesopotamia.

Biography 2023
Ara holds a Bachelor of Fine Art (Sculpture) from RMIT University (2012) and a Masters in Social Science Environment and Planning (2014). The interdisciplinary practice explores the relationship between cultural landscapes and the natural ecosystem. The ceramic works are hybrid ecosystems, models of utopian cities, and sculptural experiments. The work is also imbibed with numerous ideas centred upon conceptions of “the studio,” and the conceptual domain of socio-environmental politics.

Ara exhibited his work at both national and international exhibitions. His body of work has been supported by organizations such as the Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Victoria, and the City of Melbourne.

Arielle Walker

Arielle Walker

Arielle Walker (Taranaki, Ngāruahine, Ngāpuhi, Pākehā) is a Tāmaki Makaurau-based contemporary artist, writer and maker. 

Her creative practice seeks pathways towards reciprocal belonging through the intersections and connections between land, language, and craft, weaving together tactile storytelling and ancestral narratives. Contexts that surround this include the interconnectedness of isolated islands, the intrinsic ties of language and land, migration across the swell and pull of the ocean, pūrākau, textile traditions passed down through generations of tūpuna wāhine, roots and botanical belongings.

She holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts and a Master of Visual Arts from AUT University, and is currently working towards a PhD.

Barry Clarke

Barry Clarke

I came late to jewellery making and I am self-taught. After spending most of the 60’s till early 70’s as a seaman in the Merchant Navy, I was determined, with the money I had saved, to paint. Visits to St Ives, Cornwell where artists like Alfred Wallis, Ben Nicholson, Roger Hilton, Bob Law, Breon O’Casey and Bryan Illsley, have lived and influenced my thinking. Abstraction, with a leaning towards simplified figuration, where birds, boats and sea are not far away. In my work, jewellery methods are simple, scraps of gold or silver are melted and beaten out; stones are cut and ground.

“I love the workability and colour of gold and silver and prefer to use semi-precious stones that I often rough-cut myself. My methods are simple, forging and shaping and often the work has surface textures and marks. I am influenced by the Minoan, Cycladic and Celtic cultures as well as the modern artists, Brancusi, Picasso, Giacometti and Marini.” 

Boat series

‘Although no longer at sea, I carry it with me to the shed in the garden where I make and paint my boats.  I have some Alfred Wallis postcards on the wall, a lighthouse from Sete and bits of driftwood and pebbles from Kakanui where we have a bach.
I was a seaman in the British Merchant Navy as a boy from '63 - '72 and was determined to paint when I came ashore in 1972.  I have painted ever since and the last 12 years I have been painting ships on tin.’ 


Ben Edols & Kathy Elliott

Ben Edols & Kathy Elliott

Both Benjamin Edols and Kathy Elliott were born in Sydney. The two began working together as recent graduates from the Canberra School of Art. Ben also studied at the Royal College of Arts in Sydney.

The first exhibition of their collaborative work was in 1993. Since that time they have developed a body of work of blown and cold worked glass vessels and forms. Ben specialises in glassblowing and Kathy specialises in cold working techniques such as carving and engraving.

In 2000 they built their own glassblowing and cold working studio in Sydney. In recent years, their work has been inspired by the botanical forms and patterns found in nature. One of the qualities of glass that they most appreciate is its ability to carry light.

They have taught in Australia, America and Japan. Their work has been exhibited widely and is held in many public museums and private collections around the world including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the American Craft Museum, the National Gallery of Australia and the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Chester Nealie

Chester Nealie

Chester began potting in 1964 after instruction in New Zealand from Shoji Hamada, Takeichi Kawai and Michael Cardew. He has lectured, built kilns and conducted many firings in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, USA, Korea and Norway. His wood-fired pots show the effects of prolonged firing at high temperatures on raw clay surfaces, using an anagama kiln. Although the pots have a basic classical form, their individuality is present in the freedom and joy in hand making combined with the magical spontaneity of flame. Chester is a New Zealand potter now living and working in Australia. 

Chester’s pots are usually wheel thrown then hand manipulated to give informality, each one formed through playful practice. Careful consideration and expertise lead to each pots placement in the kiln, which is designed to achieve a variety of surface effects by handling, placing and location to the flames and ash during firing. The raw untreated pots, or with glaze or other clay surfaces interact with the intense heat during several days of firing. The firing process requires around the clock vigil of fire stoking with wood which comes from Chester’s property. In recent times some of the clay he uses comes from his own creek bed. Chester’s surrounding landscape informs and inspires his making. 

Chester usually stacks his pieces in the kiln wedging scallop shells between them. A process he developed when living near the Kaipara Harbour on a property laden with shell remains. This has the effect of not only protecting each piece from another, but leaves behind intriguing fossil like imprints and fabulous colour variations and streaks where the shell has interacted with the glaze.

Nealie has held numerous solo exhibitions in New Zealand and Australia. Participated in many group exhibitions in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Korea, China, USA, Canada, UK, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Spain and Germany. 

His work is in private collections in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, USA, Canada, Germany, Denmark, England, Scotland and Norway.

Chris Weaver

Chris Weaver

Chris Weaver began his career as a professional ceramicist following the completion of his Diploma of Fine and Applied Arts in 1975 and a Certificate in Ceramics from Otago Polytechnic in 1976.  The following year he built a kiln and studio near Hokitika.  

Chris produces a range of domestic ware which is instantly recognisable for its strong, simple uncluttered form and emphasis on function.  Items such as his grandmother’s pressing iron have inspired the sculptural quality displayed in his work.

He uses white high-firing clay body sections which are wheel thrown and then altered by hand and assembled.  The work often has additions of heart rimu handles.

Chris has exhibited throughout New Zealand and his work has won several prestigious awards.  He is represented in many public collections.  In 2011 Chris won Second Place in the Portage Ceramic Awards.

In 2013 Chris participated in the Fuping Group Artist in residence in Sturt, Mittagong, NSW, Australia.
In 2015 he was admitted to the International Academy of Ceramics, Geneva. This was followed by two artist residencies in 2016, one at the Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA and an Artist in Residency at Red Lodge Clay Centre, Red Lodge, Montana, USA.

Christina Rivett

Christina Rivett

'After graduating in 2005 from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, The Design School, with a project of large cast glass objects, I set up my own workshop in Christchurch, New Zealand and worked from here for 5 years. In 2011 I returned to my native Denmark and joined Luftkraft Glasstudie for almost 4 years. At the start of 2015 I settled back in Christchurch, New Zealand.

I work with the cast glass exploring the raw and often avoided effects and traces from the process of creating. I look for aesthetic quality and value in the non-conform. It is the process that takes the lead in my work and my series are buildt from set methods with common rules, and with deliberate room for uncontrolled elements, inviting spontaneity to play a part within these rules. My work has a clear connection to a starting point with crafts in ceramics and I always return to my reference point of the geological landscape through a strong passion for rock climbing. The textures and structures are translated to tactile experiences in glass.

Casting glass is a slow process; creating a model from wax or clay, making a plaster and quarts mould around the model, removing the model by hand or steam and finally casting the glass into the plaster mould at 820C. Depending on the thickness of the piece the annealing in the kiln (slow cooling to avoid build up of stress in the glass) can take from 1 day to 4 weeks – most of my glass sculptures being in the 4 weeks category.

Christine Cathie

Christine Cathie

Christine Cathie was born and educated in Wellington, New Zealand, and originally trained and worked in graphic design before beginning a career in cast glass. Cathie's work has quickly gained recognition and she is now considered one of the leading early career glass artists in New Zealand.

Inspired by the geographical features of the New Zealand landscape, Cathie uses simple forms and solid, natural colours to give a timeless beauty. The solidity of the glass is contrasted with the way in which light is filtered through and captured by its varying densities, creating a sense of gentle movement.

A four times finalist in the Ranamok Glass Prize (Australia and New Zealand), Cathie was selected for the New Zealand show 'Southern Exposure' at the prestigious Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, Denmark in 2004. She was commissioned to design the awards for the Arts Foundation of New Zealand's 'New Generation Awards' in 2006. More recently, Cathie received the award for Creative Excellence in the Molly Morpeth Canaday awards and was runner-up in the Cavalier Bremworth Luminous Art of Glass Awards, 2007. Her work is held in private, public and corporate collections both nationally and internationally.

In her latest series of organic cast glass forms, Cathie continues her exploration of the sculptural potential of the medium. From tall, elegantly tapering 'tendrils' to abstract forms that draw in space, Cathie’s work gives a sense of lightness and motion by the way the glass twists and turns to catch the light. A wonderful new exhibition from an artist who has created a strong reputation for exploring fluidity in cast glass through the play of light with form.

COLLECTIONS
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, New Zealand
Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, Denmark
Sir Elton John
Corporate and private collections internationally

Christine Thacker

Christine Thacker

'A formative experience for me was visiting England and working in the 1970s at the Cambridgeshire Pottery, which specialised in garden pots. Electric firing and earthenware techniques became my foundation knowledge of the pottery craft. I also saw museum collections of European medieval pottery and identify this as informing all my work since in various ways.

In a wide-ranging catalogue of work I have always used a restricted range of materials and simple construction methods. I have just two types of clay: a grogged terracotta and a white earthenware to which I add fine sand. Most of the work is coil-built, then covered with quite thick layers of white engobe which is sanded back to achieve a fine painting surface. I use a very limited range of transparent glazes from shiny through to matt clear.

I have experimented a lot with colour pigments using them in combination with oxides and painting them underneath and on top of engobes and underneath and on top of glazes. At one stage I painted with pigment powders directly onto damp engobes mixing the colours on the wares. Every potter working in earthenware is probably at heart a painter. The bonus with painting on pottery is we are able to seal our painted imagery in an enlivening coating of glass so it can shine like a stone under water.

I have made a variety of objects in clay. After 30 years of exploring the shapes of nearly everything I was ready to engage with that iconic pottery form: the jug. We don't need pottery jugs as functional items in our lives anymore because they have been usurped by glass, plastic and even cardboard products but we do need the symbolic comfort a jug can provide.

I believe everything you make contains everything you have ever made, every aesthetic you have embraced and all you have rejected, all that you have learned and all you have forgotten. I won a prize for a piece of work once and while being handed the cheque I was asked how long it had taken me to make the work. I said "about a day" and quickly added "and my entire life", in case the prize-sponsor thought the value of my effort and the size of the cheque were not equal. Each piece of work contains all that you are at the time of its making.'

Cora-Allan

Cora-Allan

Cora-Allan Lafaiki-Twiss (nee Wickliffe) is a multidisciplinary artist of Māori (Ngāpuhi, Tainui) and Niue (Alofi, Liku) descent, originally from Waitakere. In recent years her practice has focused on her efforts to revive the art form of Hiapo, prior to this she completed her Masters in Visual Art and Design in Performance from AUT (2013), also receiving a AUT Postgraduate Deans award for her research. 

A contemporary practitioner of the Niuean tradition of barkcloth known as hiapo, she is credited with reviving the "sleeping artform" which has not been practised in Niue for several generations. Her 'samplers' show her skill and draw attention to hiapo's components - white cloth (unlike the tan ground of the cloth prevalent across much of Polynesia) and the decorative elements - delicate botanical drawings and abstract patterns. Unlike lots of women across the Pacific, Wickliffe was unable to learn her craft sitting alongside older women and has had to research and teach herself. Her work is very important to the Niuean community and has been exhibited in Australia, Aotearoa, England and Niue. 

She has exhibited her work throughout Aotearoa and internationally including Australia, Niue, England and Canada. 

Her work is a part of major collections including The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland War Memorial Museum and the Wallace Arts Trust. Cora-Allan was recently undertook the McCahon House Residency (2021), Mana Moana and Te Whare Residency in Wellington (2021), received the Creative New Zealand Pacific Heritage Artist award (2020) and received Annual Arts Grant funding to focus full time on her Hiapo practice in 2021.

 

She is a founding member of BC COLLECTIVE and is a maker of Hiapo (Niuean Barkcloth).

Courtney Marama

Courtney Marama

Courtney Marama (Tainui, Ngāti Koroki Kahukura, Ngāti Ranginui) studied Jewellery design and manufacturing in Pōneke/Wellington for 3 years before heading to Te Wai Pounamu (The South Island) to immerse herself in the rich stone carving culture we have here in Aotearoa.  From there she learnt about stones and carving from various artists which then lead her to be self-taught in lapidary/faceting. This eventually resulting in the creation of Courtney Marama Jewellery, specialising in bespoke one-off custom designs hand-crafted in precious metals and proudly set with uniquely cut New Zealand gemstones. 

Because all of the work is done by Courtney it means there is a direct line from the raw earth to your ring and you know exactly who, how and where your precious ring has been crafted. Which I believe is extremely important in this day and age. The stones have only passed through no more than three hands to get to you with no mining, no unfair wages, no harsh chemicals (you get the idea) and have come safely from local rivers (or old river beds) and beaches here in New Zealand.

The raw materials already speak for themselves, Papatūānuku has done most of the work. Courtney is here to gently and respectfully craft these precious Aotearoa minerals into pieces of art that will adorn bodies for many generations to come.

Craig McIntosh

Craig McIntosh

Craig McIntosh is a contemporary jeweller/sculptor currently based in Dunedin, New Zealand. In his recent work, he has sought to develop technologically assisted methods for fabrication and construction in stone. Craig McIntosh has a Diploma in Visual Arts from the Whitirea Polytechnic, graduating in 2000.
Craig recently completed his Masters of Fine Art from Otago Polytechnic that included exploring the history of stone carving and Jewellery in Aotearoa/NZ. 

He has exhibited extensively in New Zealand and internationally, and was included in the touring survey exhibition of New Zealand jewellery, Wunderruma (2014-2015) curated by Karl Fritsch and Warwick Freeman. 

In 2016 Craig was the inaugural recipient of Doreen’s Gift, a biennial bestowal from the Blumhardt Foundation which seeks to acknowledge and foster excellence in the field of Craft. 

‘Primarily working in Pakohe (Metamorphosed Argillite) and Basalt, McIntosh’s making practice has been shaped by an ongoing relationship with the geological history and stone harvesting sites of New Zealand’s South Island. 

Positioning himself within a lineage that has sought to critically interrogate Pākeha use of stone (and other indigenous materials) within the colonial context, McIntosh has developed a practice that is self-aware and culturally critical of the impulse to appropriate. Drawing instead on abstractions from the fields of architecture and engineering, this body of work continues McIntosh’s experimentation with composite carving techniques, which he deploys to shape an embodied image of place formed of manifold relationships and responsibilities. 

By transitioning this series of objects away from wearability, yet remaining firmly situated in the context of contemporary jewellery, 'Ground Work' gestures to that which cannot be possessed, and instead edges us toward that which possesses us; the echoes and structural force of a historical process, to which we are called to awaken, embrace, and transform.’ – Elle Loui August, 2017

 Artist Statement:
“My work has always been about the world around me, I use found objects as a starting point for making. 

A portion of what I find is directly recycled into adornment, other objects are kept, filed away and preserved, for a later date to be used as a reference for carving.”

David Murray

David Murray

Currently a full-time glass artist, David Murray came to the medium from a background in slip-cast ceramics. He studied at the School of Art, Otago Polytechnic, in the late 1980's and has recently attended workshops by many of the leading New Zealand and international glass artists. Murray's work is highly sought after for both exhibition and collection and is held in public collections internationally. In 2003 he was awarded the premier award in the Ranamok Prize for contemporary glass.

Murray achieved a high level of technical skill and critical acclaim after only a few years of working as a full-time glass artist. His signature series, the Hunter/Gatherer, struck a chord with local and international audiences for both their intention and strong, highly resolved form.

Debbie Adamson

Debbie Adamson

Debbie Adamson’s work uses industrial steel and fencing wire, forged and carved to create a series of needle pendants depicting various species of native broom. These are endemic leguminous plants, many of which are vulnerable, grow slowly and occupy fragile habitats. Debbie's work is a response to 2 years spent living and working in rural Central Otago. Her work is a response to that environment, as well as a conversation with broader considerations about landscape and the traces and impact left on it.
Debbie trained in jewellery from Dunedin School of Art, at Otago Polytechnic, and was part of the menoring project HANDSHAKE run by jeweller and educator Peter Deckers.

Emma Camden

Emma Camden

Emma Camden immigrated to New Zealand from England in the early 1990s. Since then she has developed a position as one of the country's leading studio glass artists.

Working exclusively with cast glass, Camden has constantly pushed the boundaries of the medium and broken new ground in the area of large scale casting. Her work is conceptually driven, often exploring issues arising from her identity and personal experience. Her current series investigates large scale solid forms and ideas of structure and architecture.

Camden has received considerable recognition for both her technical and sculptural innovation. She has received numerous awards, including being one of the few New Zealand artists to have won the supreme award for the Ranamok Glass Prize (Australia). One of her signature tower works was also featured in a limited edition applied arts series of New Zealand postage stamps in 2002.

Camden currently works full time as an artist in Whanganui. Her work is held in major collections locally and Internationally including the Auckland Museum, Auckland, the National Art Glass Collection, Wagga Wagga, Australia, and Ebeltost Museum, Denmark.

Estate of Ann Verdcourt

Estate of Ann Verdcourt

Ann Verdcourt was born in Bedfordshire, England, and immigrated to New Zealand with her husband in 1965. Her work references many other artists and art movements, drawing from her extensive knowledge of art history. In her work one can find allusions to artists including Velasquez, Matisse, Modigliani and Brancusi to the famous earthenware depiction of the Venus of Willendorf.

Verdcourt says of her work: 'Unless the work is a commission I don't make working drawings or scale models before making. I like to be surprised as the work builds, that way I keep it fresh. Sometimes I can visualise the finished object and build it in one go. Most of the time I will have several starts/stops and decide it's not going to work and wedge up the clay and start again. I may wonder if I had done this or that differently, would the work be better? That is how I end up making three similar groups, e.g. 'Ted, Fred and Karla'. Each piece is still individually modelled with its own style which keeps the work alive.

I don't have a set way of making. I coil, pinch, pile the clay up and squeeze it or make solid lumps and hollow it out. I have made plaster press moulds for the cartons but avoid using moulds if possible. Fifty years of using clay has not dulled my enthusiasm for it.'

Verdcourt has been working with clay since the 1950s, and has work in the collections of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, the Auckland Museum, Auckland, Te Manawa, Palmerston North, Sarjeant Art Gallery, Wanganui, the James Wallace Collection, Auckland, Hawke's Bay Museum, Napier, and the Dowse, Lower Hutt.

Estate of Gavin Hitchings

‘I have, over a number of years, been interested in exploring the problem of giving tangible expression to imaginative forms which arise from an ongoing preoccupation with the juxtapositions of “architectural” structures and the “natural” organic substrate which is the earth’s surface.  These deliberations may be seen as both a metaphor for concerns about conservational issues and also an acknowledgement of natural entropic processes.’

Hitchings pieces were informed and inspired by the natural world, geological features, coastal environments, and time. He also examined these forces through the lens of humanity - how do we translate our understanding of geology into built structures, how do we navigate oceans and how do we perceive time?

Underpinning all of Hitchings’ work is the grid. In a purely formal and minimalist way grids, with some diagonal variations, were fundamental framework from which Hitchings could endlessly extrapolate.

The late Gavin Hitchings was a jeweller, sculptor and former design lecturer at Nelson Polytechnic, School of Visual Arts. Hitchings work has always been concerned with meaning, process and exploration.

Fran Allison

Fran Allison

Aotearoa born Fran Allison graduated from the Royal College of Art, London. As a designer and jeweler, she practiced and lectured in London and Melbourne for a number of years before returning to Aotearoa, New Zealand, in 1994. She spent several decades as a senior lecturer in jewellery at the School of Creative Arts, Manukau Institute of Technology, and at Hungry Creek Art and Craft School in Tāmaki Makaurau.

The inspiration for her work comes from many areas, including a fascination with the connotations associated with found and/or discarded domestic objects. She cites Julian Schnabel: 'I work with things left over from other things' as a source for this exploration:‘ I like to use pre-existing objects in my work that come with an already established history and reading. Then I like to mess with that reading in some way. The objects start off as decorative in one sense or in one environment and end up on the body as decorative jewellery pieces. A challenge for me is to reconfigure these 'found' fragments so that they still possess an essence of their original attractiveness.'

Frances Stachl

Frances Stachl

‘I’ve always liked small precious things, both natural and man-made. So although the pleasure of jewellery making was an astonishing discovery for me it was also possibly a natural path to follow. As a kid I spent hours looking through my maternal grandmother’s jewellery collection, delighted with the skill and detail in the pieces. The most exciting thing was that everything had its own story; every piece came with its own piece of history which led to other stories… This brooch was her mother’s, that pendant was made by my grandfather’s grandfather, those fob tassels and the cigarette case belonged to uncle Albert who wore a fedora and smoked like a train… the narrative ability of jewellery delights me still.’

Frances Stachl (Ngāpuhi) completed her training at Whitireia Polytechnic in 1999 and is now based in Whanganui

Galia Amsel

Galia Amsel

Galia Amsel was born in London in 1967 and by the time of her emigration to New Zealand in 2003 was already a highly acclaimed glass artist.  Amsel has exhibited in Britain, France, Spain, Ireland, the United States, the Netherlands and New Zealand and is represented in many major art collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum (United Kingdom), the Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts (Canada), Glassammiung Ersting (Germany), the Ulster Museum (Ireland), the Chrysler Museum of Art (United States), the Corning Museum of Glass (United States), and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (New Zealand). 

Amsel’s work is characterised by simple forms and often vibrant colours, features she attributes to the years she lived in Hong Kong as a child and young teenager.  In her curved and circular forms the fluid shape of the vacant space is as important as that of the glass itself, while in her more static, straight-edged works the solidity of form is contrasted with fine surface details.  Although Amsel has worked with blown glass in the past, she now focuses primarily upon casting. 

Amsel has recently been reminded of the New Zealand she and her husband encountered when they first arrived from London almost 20 years ago. She’s always been struck by the clean air and the quality of light. The way sunlight can catch the rain, has inspired the textures on many of her pieces. She polishes the flecked highlights on her work to reflect the way the light dances and brings forms to life. Amsel’s work attempts to capture fleeting moments, such as moment, tension, balance, rhythm, and more recently emotion. Amsel’s pieces are constructed, cast, and finished to replicate this energy. The heating, cooling of molten glass makes it the perfect medium to develop these ideas.

Hana Rakena

Hana Rakena

'Shells, stones and plants, and the effects of water, wind and natural forces on them inspire me. Also ancient pottery, Maori weaving and carving.'

I was surrounded by art and craft making as I grew up. After school and university I spent 6 months working with West Coast potter Chris Weaver, studied ceramics at Otago Polytech for a year and took part in clay workshops with inspirational New Zealand potters Rick Rudd, Robyn Stewart and Philip Luxton.

These pieces are coiled and pinched by hand over several days or weeks, then refined by scraping back with a metal scraper. The clays I use have grog (pre-fired and ground up clay) added, and this gives the texture I like. After bisque firing I cover each piece with a terrasigillata (fine clay slip) and gas fire them for 10 or 11 hours, leaving the final colour to the flame and atmospheric conditions of the kiln.

The perfection of a sea smoothed shell can never be recreated. Yet I aim for that purity of form, sensual feel and mysterious power in my ceramic pieces.'

- Hana Rakena

Ieva Grigienė

Ieva Grigienė

I am a jewellery artist focused on the fusion of craft and art. There are times when ideas come first, but usually my hands think better than my head, yet instead of resisting, I enjoy it. I like to observe my environment, look for interesting forms around me and later, having collected different, mostly natural forms, I search for combinations that I have not seen before and turn those matches into jewellery pieces.

Jane Dodd

Jane Dodd

Jane Dodd is a contemporary jeweller based in Dunedin. She has a high profile and is well regarded for her jewellery which often addresses elements of landscape and a sense of place within New Zealand. 

Dodd’s use of landscape appears in different guises throughout her work.  In some cases it embodies personal landscapes, fragments of places which evoke memories, people, and times shared.  These elements are carefully deconstructed and re-assembled, creating the need for the viewer to ‘read’ the piece in the same sense that one reads a map.  In other works, these elements are singled out and framed where they create a memento or snapshot triggering recollections of places and events.  

Jane Dodd came to jewellery through a Diploma in 3D design from UNITEC in Auckland, following earlier courses of study at the universities of Otago and Auckland.  Since the early ‘90s Dodd has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in New Zealand and Australia, and she is recognised by collectors, galleries and institutions as a significant artist in this field. 

Her works, fabricated from a mixture of different gold alloys (to achieve a range of colour), sterling silver, bone, wood, and shell, display the high level of technical craftsmanship for which Dodd is admired.

In recent years Jane Dodd’s jewellery practice has pivoted around the portrayal of animals.  With a subtext of human impact and interaction she has explored issues of extinction and infestation, cruelty and conflict.  Strongly influenced by historic European craft traditions but mindful of the plunder of the natural world that enabled and sanctioned such exuberant work, Dodd, with her compulsion for crafting and her love of materials, channels these contradictory emotions into works of tension, humour and intrigue.

Family Kingdom
Taxonomically speaking “Kingdom” refers to a broad division of all earth’s lifeforms.  Plants and Fungi are 2 such kingdoms, as is Animalia, or “The Animal Kingdom” as we often call it.  Within Animalia are dozens of sub-divisions or phyla, branches of the tree of life, each containing a myriad of species.  The most populous nine phyla are represented in works in this family tree of jewels.

In The Family Jane Dodd positions the human species within the Animal Kingdom.  She began this project with an exhibition at Te Uru in June 2019, portraying our closest relatives, the taxonomic order of Primates...
Character and narrative are given to humans, fellow simians, other mammals, fish, molluscs, worms, insects, sponges, and other animals alike.  It is certainly not pure science, license is taken, comedy is king and story-telling trumps fact.  But the device gives a framework to assert that humans are just another twig of a gloriously rich and diverse tree.

Jay Hutchinson

Jay Hutchinson

Jay Hutchinson is a New Zealand artist based in Dunedin. He graduated from the Dunedin School of Art with an MFA in 2008 and works with numerous mediums including hand-embroidery, performance, drawing, video and fabric construction. His most recent projects have explored product fetishism, the devaluation of the​ worker and our decaying economic system. 

He exhibits regularly in publicly funded galleries, including the Blue Oyster Art Project Space (2006, 2007, 2012, 2018), the DPAG (2006, 2008), C3, Melbourne (2011), Enjoy Gallery (2016), the Dowse Art Museum (2017, 2020), the Aigantighe Art Gallery (2018), Suter Art Gallery (2019), and the Sarjeant Gallery (2020). His work has also been widely shown in Aotearoa dealer galleries. 

Hutchinson inflects his needlework with a ‘street’ sensibility that continually challenges the high art/mass culture divide. He forcefully expresses the deeply flawed and fractured cultures and ideologies that plague the twenty-first century - in which he and his viewers remain inextricably caught.

John Parker

John Parker

John Parker is considered to be one of the leading studio potters in New Zealand. His long involvement with the New Zealand ceramics community formally began with his completion of a Master of Arts (ceramics) from the Royal College in London. He is one of the few local potters to hold formal training in his area, and this period - during which he was heavily influenced by European artists Lucie Rie and Han Coper - gave a strong foundation for the disciplined and intelligent style for which he is now recognised.

Parker has often engaged with pointed intellectual arguments in the creation of his work - most obviously the debate surrounding the handmade; craft versus production in ceramics. His work draws an obvious parallel with a coveted series of early New Zealand production ceramics from manufacturer Crown Lynn, particularly the work of Ernest Shufflebotham in the 1950's. Crown Lynn took the unusual step at the time of employing artisans and designers to create their ranges of mass produced domestic ceramics. The examination of this handmade/mass produced format led Parker to investigate it in his work.

"My aesthetic is of the stark and the industrial via the design concepts of science fiction cinema. My concerns are with finish and control and the infinite possibilities of severe minimalism of form and construction" He strives to create the perfect shape, decorated with geometric grooves applied with flawless precision. These objects are devoid of the 'makers touch' which identifies most studio ceramics, yet they are handmade with every detail and mark attended to by the artist.

More recently Parker has extended this series to a number of more experimental, project-based series revolving around the reconsideration of form and surface. Taking cues from an experimental show 'Superstrata' held at Objectspace in Auckland, he has been developing a series of built-up and interlocked paperclay works, more sculptural than functional, which add a further dimension to Parker's artistic practice.

Parker's work is avidly collected within New Zealand and is held in major public and private collections. This talented man is also recognised as one of New Zealand's leading theatre designers and is well known as a writer and teacher.

John Roy

John Roy

John Roy was formally trained at Wanganui Polytechnic where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1997 majoring in Ceramics. Since then he has continued to work in clay.

John reflects on his work: 'My work revolves around iconic forms, and the social memory built around them. My work has strong social, political and aesthetic intentions, however, I introduce ideas and thoughts in a way that I hope the viewer can relate to them or interpret comfortably. I'm also interested in what the viewer brings to the work - their own ideas and thoughts and how they can relate my work to their own personal experiences.'

In 2000 John spent two months as artist in residence in the Ceramic Department of the Wanganui Polytechnic.

John has won numerous Awards including the Premier Award at the New Zealand Society of Potters Exhibition in 2004, Supreme Award at the Waiheke Ceramics Award in 2004, Non-Functional Object Award at the New Zealand Society of Potters Exhibition in 2006, and the Waikato Award at theWaiclay National Ceramics Exhibition in 2006.

John's work is held in a number of public collections including the Auckland War Memorial Museum, Tauranga Art Gallery, Waikato Museum and Art Gallery, the James Wallace Arts Trust collection and the Sarjeant Gallery in Wanganui.

In 2012 John was an artist in residence at Tylee cottage in Whanganui.

Joshua Hershman

Joshua Hershman

Born almost blind, Joshua Hershman underwent years of vision therapy to train his visual cortex to comprehend peripheral vision and depth perception. Through this process, he became acutely aware of the curious nature of visual anomalies and light distortions. In his work, Josh explores the relationship between vision, light, and the photographic process. Using cast and polished glass, he discovers the optical aspects of the material and plays with the mechanics of vision.

"The traditional film camera has all but disappeared from the contemporary landscape. It sits as an analog relic from a bygone era, but also serves as a critical historic object, as an evolutionary pivot, which ushered us into our current image-obsessed world. By casting vintage film cameras as hollow forms within a solid block of glass, I’m highlighting the technology’s lost physicality, the invisible magic of the craft-based photographic process, and the camera’s role in transmuting our visual perception of the world." Joshua Hersman

Jude Te Punga Nelson

Jude Te Punga Nelson

Jude Te Punga Nelson (Te Āti Awa) stepped into the Māori weaving world through Te Wananga o Aotearoa, 2012. She graduated in 2016 with a BA Maunga Kura Toi (Raranga). Through this journey, she has come to recognize that something was missing in her Pakeha upbringing, and she feels like her life and art are coming into focus as she discovers her Māori roots and traditions. Currently she is exploring the art of Tāniko. This uniquely Māori variation of finger twining is used to create colourful geometric borders on highly prized cloaks. Each pattern has spiritual and physical meanings: sadly, some meanings have been lost over time. Jude states, “I’m in awe of the ancestor’s weaving. No graph paper and coloured pencils, no Excel spreadsheets, no good quality lighting and no glasses, no running hot water to keep their hands clean. And yet their mahi was highly complex and superbly woven.” Her work has been purchased by museums, corporations, and private collectors across Aotearoa.

Julia Obermaier

Julia Obermaier

Stones fascinate me. Every little part of them is unique and an embodiment for unswayable nature. A human being can shape a stone but not fabricate one. The material stone has something majestic. It is a hard-bitten material, heavy, stable but also light and fragile. Stonecutting takes a lot of time and patience and resembles a meditation. It is as if the stone keeps the eternity within itself to thwart the fast pace of our time.

My playing hands are the tools for my ideas and thinking. Through them I feel and touch the surface and the outlines of the material. They are the medium, which connects my inner world with the outer world. They urge the mutual process of touching and grasping, changing my ideas and my perception. It is driving itself, simultaneous with seeing, touching, feeling and thinking through the material.

In my work I cut slices out of stone and build up new spaces. In their inside, hollow spaces are developing with corners and nooks. These are constructions, which enclose blank spaces and create free spaces. Through that process, a kind of body for your soul is generated, which can be loaded up with the wearers own personal feelings, perceptions and sensations. It protects the wearer’s inner space, like a second skin.

Kate Fitzharris

Kate Fitzharris

Ceramic artist Kate Fitzharris has become well-known for her doll-like figures, which appear as well-loved antiques from the moment of their creation.

These works, with ceramic hands, heads and feet but soft, grain-filled bodies, bring to mind the traditional toys we might expect our grandmothers to have cherished as children.

Fitzharris hand forms creates the ceramic elements of her works, as well as incorporating 'found' materials, recalling traditional doll-making techniques where scraps of leftover fabric could be transformed from sewing room detritus into a child's beloved toy.

She writes:
'My work is very much inspired by my environment, of my experiences of living in this diverse world, exploring people's relationships with other animals.

My work stimulates feelings; of wildness, and domesticity, nostalgia. A sense of something almost articulated, nearly, and yet, not quite. I want my work to speak to the body of the person looking at or holding it, reminding them of the physicality of this world, to touch them.'

Katherine Smyth

Katherine Smyth

Wellington based Katherine Smyth trained in ceramics at the National Art School in Sydney for 3 years from 1989 - 1991. For 8 years prior to this she had worked full time as a chef.
In 1993, alongside English potter Jim Mason, Katherine spent several months working in a small village near ancient Petra, Jordan. They taught pottery skills to young village women in the hope of reviving local ancient skills and traditions.
Smyth has been back to the Middle East a number of times since the first teaching job. In 1994 she accompanied a group of archaeologists from Sydney University to work on a Middle Bronze Age site in the North of Jordan.
From 1995 until 1998 she was based in London. She had studio space at Great Western Studios and cooked part-time at The Sugar Club. Katherine designed and produced crockery for the restaurant and for Peter Gordon's first two cookbooks.

In 1998 Smyth returned to New Zealand, basing herself in Wellington. She has been a full time potter since the return to New Zealand, exhibiting regularly. Her work is held in a number of local and overseas public collections and New Zealand Embassies. She has guest lectured at Auckland's Unitec, Wellington's Massey University and The National Art School in Sydney, Australia,

In 2001 she designed and produced of a range of tableware for Chow restaurant in Wellington. In 2003 she was awarded a Creative New Zealand Professional Development Grant to travel back to the Middle East to research Bronze Age pottery. In 2004 she was awarded another grant to produce work as an outcome of the research.

Kathryn Tsui

Kathryn Tsui

 

Kathryn Tsui graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Sculpture) from Auckland University of Technology (2007). She is of Chinese descent, and is based in Tairua, Coromandel Peninsula where she is a textile artist who works primarily in weaving and beading.

In 2023 Masterworks presented Tsui’s solo exhibition redwhiteblue and in June 2024 she will have a solo exhibition at Objectspace. Her work is held in the art collections of The Dowse Art Museum, the University of Waikato, Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato and Tūhura Otago Museum. She was an artist in residence at Driving Creek Pottery in 2023. Tsui is also the recipient of a Creative New Zealand Arts Grant 2023-2024.

To date two essays have been written about her practice, 'The weaving of Kathryn Tsui, Aotearoa (New Zealand)’ by Greta Costello, published by Springer Books 2023 and 'Kathryn Tsui redwhiteblue - towards a democratisation of making', by Dr Bronwyn Lloyd, Masterworks Gallery, 2023.  

Kirstie Rea

Kirstie Rea

Kirstie Rea has worked in kiln formed glass for over 20 years and been involved with the combination of kiln formed and blown glass since 1994.

Rea studied with Klaus Moje at the Canberra School of Art; and coordinated the Bullseye "Latitudes" Project worldwide, and has been vice president of AusGlass, 1992-93.

Recognized for her kiln formed glass, she divides her time working in her studio, and teaching at the Canberra School of Art and workshops internationally.

Layla Walter

Layla Walter

Layla Walter is a New Zealand glass artist who has gained recognition for her works in cast glass. When international master glass artist and teacher Daniel Clayman lectures about glass over the ages - from 3500 years until the present, he selected an image of ‘Kokako’ by Layla Walter to show what is possible now. Justine Olsen from Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa says “The visual simplicity of Layla Walter’s forms belie complex conversations around New Zealand’s history, our environment and the importance of people and place”.1 Her work is held in distinguished private collections and significant public institutions (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Museum). Walter’s work is displayed in museums, galleries and cultural embassies around the world: the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have placed her work in Egypt, Iran, France, and USA.

She continues a tradition of cast glass, using techniques which are highly skilled and complex, employing internal and external carving often using very personal representations of weaving or native flora and fauna carved in bas-relief. There has been much critical acclaim for her detailed work. Walter’s work was awarded Best In Show at the New Zealand Society of Artists in Glass conference, 2016. Of her glass casting, Australian critic Noris Ioannou wrote “Layla Walter’s Magnolia Vase is a tour-de-force…”2 Her latest work Fabric of Humanity is on show in Ko rātou, ko tātou | On other-ness and us-ness, conversations with Islam, alongside and from inside at NorthArt, Northcote, Auckland from 15 March - 1 April 2020. In 2021 Walter has a solo exhibition with Masterworks Gallery, Auckland, and alongside conceptual art, video and craft, she will exhibit her glass work in Ake Tonu, Ka Rere Ai - Birds of Meaning at Te Kongahu Museum of Waitangi, Tau Henare Drive, Waitangi.

In 2019 she was one of 200 international artists selected, and the sole New Zealand representative for the first International Handicrafters Festival in Uzbekistan. She was also one of three international guest speakers invited to Uly Dala Elі - Forum of Artisans in Kazakhstan, where she presented the works of 14 leading NZ craft artists. There she also presented at the Eurasian Creative Forum conference; Sentences of Art and Science. Walter has been invited to teach, demonstrate and talk about glass casting and New Zealand glass in Australia, America, Canada, Germany, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and New Zealand.

Walter a representative for Aotearoa / New Zealand on the World Craft Council - Asia Pacific Region WCC-APR. An ambassador for New Zealand glass art and craft, she produced the DVD ‘Artists Working with Glass in New Zealand’,3 a valuable historical resource about glass practice in New Zealand, which was shown internationally, including at the American Glass Art Society (GAS) Conference, 2005 Adelaide, Australia. She has been a committee member of the New Zealand Society of Artists.

She has been invited to write a chapter in a book 'Educating in the Crafts - the Global Experience' by Lindy Joubert, (Senior Lecturer, University of Melbourne, and Vice President of the World Craft Council Asia Pacific Region, South Pacific), for this Walter will discuss her experience representing NZ in the ‘stans including other New Zealand craft artists. Uzbekistan and the Promise of Apple Trees, a 1000 word article and images by Layla Walter was published in Garland Magazine, the online forum for the World Craft Council Asia Pacific region, September 2019. The Olympics of Craft a 1200 word article for Art News NZ on recent travels to the ‘Stans’ is published in their Autumn 2020 issue. Walter’s glass has been included on six occasions for publication in the Corning Museum of Glass (USA) New Glass Review,4

  1. Milford House Galleries ‘Conversations’ Layla Walter solo exhibition text 2015.
  2. International GAS Conference, NZ Glass Exhibition review, The Advertiser (Adelaide, Australia), 9 May 2005
  3. The DVD Artists Working With Glass In New Zealand, co-directed with film-maker Alyx Duncan
  4. Corning Museum of Glass New Glass Review inclusions: 1996, 1998, 2004, 2008, 2011, 2013.


 

Lisa Walker

Lisa Walker

"What I find most important is Lisa’s exploration of the cultural function of jewelry, and a revitalization of it to be relevant to now. Walker’s jewelry is the extreme version of the most personal contemporary appurtenance. It is the physical manifestation of the mental and virtual baggage of living NOW. It is a stream of consciousness record of the whims and obsessions of an over-mediafied, production inundated, anxious global culture. If our collective subconscious brain could turn its pockets inside out, showing the world what we are really made of, it would look like Lisa’s work.”
Kerianne Kwik, Assistant Professor of Jewelry and Metalsmithing at San Diego State University, US.

Walker uses a vast range of materials and construction methods. She creates objects that consciously simmer with influences from all aspects of culture and life. The pieces are often laced with references to contemporary jewellery of the past forty years, as she questions and researches what jewellery means and what it could be. Walker largely positions her work around the history, the future and the boundaries of jewellery.

Lisa Walker returned from Munich in 2010 after 15 years as a jeweller/artist/designer, mostly working in the area of contemporary jewellery. She was a student of Professor Otto Kunzli at the Munich Arts Acadamy in Germany from 1995 – 2001 and was awarded Meisterschülerin/Head Student in 2001. She exhibits and is involved in projects in museums, galleries, and other venues in Europe, Japan, America, Australia, and New Zealand. She is regularly invited to teach workshops and give lectures in educational institutions around the world.

In 2010, Walker was also awarded the Françoise van den Bosch Prize which she describes as the Nobel Prize of the Contemporary Jewellery World.

Lisa West

Lisa West

Lisa West was born in Tauranga and began her jewellery training in 1986. She studied various aspects of jewellery design and production before gaining a Certificate in Craft and Design in 1989, and a Diploma of Applied Arts in 1991, from Hungry Creek Art and Craft School.

After moving to Auckland in 1993 West began to make flame worked glass beads under the tutelage of glass artist Peter Viesnik, and included these in her work to superb effect.

West has been able to create jewellery full time since 1994 and her style is now easily recognisable. She references the natural world in every piece – necklaces strewn with blossoms, brooches harbouring intricately engraved moths, and beads with the vivid markings of snake skin have long been a part of her oeuvre.

Many of West’s works are exquisitely detailed while other pieces retain a timeless simplicity of form, allowing the beauty of the materials – primarily silver, glass, stone and shell – to speak for themselves.

Lisa West has exhibited her work throughout New Zealand and internationally.

Lisa Woods

Lisa Woods

Lisa initially gained a City and Guilds Advanced Craft Certificate in Diamond Mounting at Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, London. The focus being on technical and traditional aspects of jewellery making. Lisa then extended this completing a three-year Art and design B.A hons. Degree majoring ion jewellery at Central St Martins, London. 

Her work has been exhibited and sold in the U.K, Germany. Spain, Czechoslovakia, U.S.A, Japan, Singapore, Australia and N.Z 

“I often choose uniquely shaped pearls, diamonds, ancient coins, coloured stones, gold or silver to create earrings. 

I frequently use simple geometric shapes allowing the materials and their intrinsic qualities to stand out.” 

Luke Jacomb

Luke Jacomb

Luke Jacomb received extensive training in glassblowing techniques in the United States, where he spent a total of 8 years training, working and refining his practice. Jacomb recently returned to New Zealand bringing with him a wealth of expert skills and knowledge.

Jacomb's latest body of work, the Pacific themed series of blown and cast glass works including a life-sized paddle and a canoe, has already received much critical acclaim. It was be on exhibition earlier this year at the Otago Museum in Dunedin.

Jacomb also works together with his partner Kate Rutecki, who is an expert in glass casting skills and also lends her expertise in design and concept.

Jacomb is well established on the international glass art scene and his work can be found in a number of important public collections including:

Birmingham Museum of Art, Al USA
Cleveland Institute of Technology, OH USA
Corning Museum of Glass, NY USA
Ebeltoft Glass Museum, Demark
Milwaukee Museum of Dec Arts(Villa terrace), WI USA
New Orleans Museum of Art, LA USA
Works Museum, OH USA

Lukeke Design

Lukeke Design

Lukeke Design was established in 2006 by Luke Jacomb (Auckland, New Zealand) and Katherine Rutecki (New York, USA) who have respectively risen to the forefront of the international studio glass movement.

Their reputation is firmly established in the United States and they are both represented in significant private and public collections, including the Ebeltoff Glass Museum (Denmark), Corning Museum of Glass (New York, USA) and the New Orleans Museum of Art (Louisiana, USA).

"We produce an affordable range of handmade cast and blown glass works. We want to bring beautiful glass work into people's homes."

Today, Luke runs Lukeke's glass casting studio in Te Atatu, Auckland (New Zealand) and his glass blowing 'hot-shop' in Avondale, Auckland with his talented team team of glass artists - Matthew Hall, Scott Dunster, Kate Mitchell, Lauren Richards and Mike McGregor. 

Mary Curtis

Mary Curtis

Curtis began making jewellery in 1986, after completing a trade certificate in the craft. Her practice demonstrates a keen sensitivity to the visual dialogues that unfold between objects, whether on public display or at home. Small ‘conversations’ of contrast or similarity arise between these works, with their wide range of textures, shapes and weights. Her display arrangements see pieces divided into lines and clusters; using space to highlight qualities of distinction, and sameness, within the body of the collection. The forms sit or hang with a sense of liveliness and mobility; a feeling that stems perhaps from Curtis’ continual arranging and rearranging of these forms in her work space.  

Curtis has worked in jewellery education for over 28 years, including as a senior lecturer at Manukau Institute of Technology and continues to work at Hungry Creek today. Her work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent group exhibitions including: solo exhibition Metadecorative, at Objectspace, Tāmaki in 2010, Wunderrūma, 2014 – 15, which toured Galarie Handwerk (Munich, Germany), The Dowse Art Museum, and the Auckland Art Gallery; Ornamento, Contemporary New Zealand Jewellery, 2016, at the Whakatane Museum and Arts, and Wundermeke, 2015, at Fingers gallery, Auckland.
Curtis’ work is held in the collections of The Dowse Art Museum, and the Auckland Museum. 


‘quietly’
“Trees have long been trying to reach us but they speak in frequencies too low for us to hear”. Richard Powers, The Overstory 

The etymological root of the word bead in English is from the Old English noun bede, meaning prayer. “To run a string of beads through your hands is to touch an ancient practice”. Beads have been used as objects for calming and meditation across many cultures and religions. They are a powerful tool to slow the breath and silence the mind. 

There is much to be anxious about, the divide between our economic systems and our ecosystems grows bigger all the time. We continually produce and consume without taking much stock of the damage caused by privileging economic outcomes. 

The beads in quietly offer the wearer a chance to slow down, to breathe quietly and connect with the rhythms of nature. As a maker I am interested in the life of all the materials I use, where they come from and where they end up. The beads in this exhibition are made from wood that is sourced sustainably from within New Zealand and all materials that make these necklaces can be recycled 

“In our gaian world everything is connected to and influences everything else.” 

References:
Powers. R, The Overstory, Penguin Random House, 2018
Strand C., Worry beads, ricycle The Buddhist Review, 2006
Flannery. T, The Weather Makers, Text Publishing, 2005

Matthew Hall

Matthew Hall

In Matthew Hall’s studio, glass is not precious and static, it is alive and moving. After blowing a shape Hall grabs a pair of snips and cuts the glass like it is a piece of leather. Heating it momentarily Hall reminisces “I always wondered how the Italian’s made their glass so thin..?” Then gripping his blowpipe he spins the molten glass around his body and answers his own question. “…With flair and showmanship!” He was creating one of his Fazzoletto Bowls, a design originally made by Fulvio Bianconi for Venini & Co, Murano. 

“Most of my work is the process.” Hall says. “The finished object is just one part.” Watching Hall work hot glass in his studio is one continuous flowing movement. To be a glassworker you need to be quick and nimble, responding to the material in the moment as it slowly cools and can no longer be manipulated. 

There is none of the preciousness or fussiness usually associated with how we use glass at home. Glass is usually thought about in terms of form and optic quality, which Hall is a master of, but should also be thought about as a material frozen in time. Hall likens the process of glass-blowing to having rhythms and swelling energy like skateboarding or surfing, his forms follow a certain material logic. “My work is a mix of art, science and the dance of making …” 

While Hall constructs a new hot-shop at his home he works from fellow glass artist Luke Jacomb’s studio in West Auckland. Hall and Jacomb have been friends since teenagers when they both got jobs working for Jacomb’s dad, John Croucher, at Gaffer Glass. After working at Gaffer Hall developed his practice while apprenticing to John Penman and Peter Viesnik; as well as training in the Czech Republic and Murano, Italy. 

Hall’s work is inspired by the clean forms found in Italian modernism as well as a material sensibility inherent in working molten glass. But most of all, Hall has a particular sensitivity to the swelling translucent qualities of colour.

Matthew McIntyre-Wilson

Iwi: Taranaki, Hapu: Titahi / Nga Mahanga 

Originally trained as a jeweller, it was during the l990’s that McIntyre Wilson also became interested in Maori weaving, learning traditional techniques from friend and master weaver Rangi Kiu. 

While initially taught in flax, McIntyre Wilson soon combined his two areas of expertise and began to weave in copper and silver, creating intricately detailed kete, arm bands, wall panels and hinaki.  McIntyre Wilson reworks these traditional forms into a contemporary context, often utilising a smaller, more delicate scale and always making use of precious materials, further enhancing the complexity of each form’s creation.

May Trubuhovich

May Trubuhovich

May is an Auckland-based artist using hand embroidery to create intricate textile works. She graduated with a BFA (Film) from Ilam School of Fine Arts, Christchurch, in 1992. 

May’s practice is informed by her background in animation and illustration. Her short films of the 1990s, including the award-winning Feline, have been shown in art galleries and international film festivals here in NZ and around the globe. 

May’s work ranges from the quirky and playful to the deeply introspective and psychologically-based. She considers both aspects to be equally important within her practice, much as in real life. 

May first started learning embroidery techniques as a way to inject some fun into mending her children’s clothes. She soon found it to be an ideal art form to practice within family life, as it can be picked up and put away quickly, worked on almost anywhere, and doesn’t require a lot of space.

Mike Crawford

Mike Crawford

Mike Crawford’s practice has been built on the strong foundations of his Bachelor of Design degree from Unitec which he followed up with many years of work at the studio of pioneering glass artist Ann Robinson, perfecting his skills and developing his identity as an artist. From the beginning Mike has been interested in the sculptural side of glass casting and early cast objects over time developed into sculptural vessel forms.

Mike has built a practice exploring the Maori side of his Maori and Scottish heritage and his interest in sculptural vessels. Research into hue (gourds) and their traditional use as storage for preserving birds has seen the evolution of Mike’s practice to forms that combine both bird and vessel characteristics. His exploration of vessel forms has lead him to research other Maori vessel forms such as the kumete that were traditionally carved wooden bowls that at times had stalk or beak like ends to them. This rich history and the plethora of bird life in Aotearoa provide Mike with a wealth of inspiration for further investigation of the vessel form.

His mastery of his craft is evident in his deep understanding of line and form and the manipulation and play between internal and external space that he manages to achieve in both his translucent and opaque works to alluring effect. The strength of Mike’s work is its ability to contribute to the importance of the vessel in human history in a way that talks about place in a meaningful and timeless way.

As well as private collections in New Zealand, Australia and North America, Crawford has work in the collections of the Dowse Art Museum, Waikato Museum of Art and History, University of Waikato Art Collection, and Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand.

Mystery Creek Ceramics

Mystery Creek Ceramics

Alex Wilkinson is the maker behind Mystery Creek Ceramics and Kapu Uku. 

I found clay and my passion for the pottery medium in 2015 at a beginner’s class at The Waikato Society of Potters. Clay as it does for so many people sparked an absolute love for making and self-expression in me to the point where I find myself a ceramic artist today.

I credit pottery with helping me out of a severe period of depression and putting me back on the path of valuing myself and my contribution to the world. I simply would not be here if it were not for me trying a night class in pottery and my incredible support network.

I am currently studying at The Waikato Institute of Technology in their honours program in sculpture focusing on ceramics. Through this course I hope to extend my learning and understanding of clay and where that fits in the larger sculpture world.

Mystery Creek Ceramics has developed out of a love for nerikomi and functional beautiful tableware. I currently have three amazing staff and regularly take interns into my studio to teach them about the niche process I love so much.

Passing my passion for ceramics on is my favourite part of my practice and I do this through teaching. I currently co-ordinate and teach the Diploma in Arts and Design, Ceramics Program at The Waikato Society of Potters through Otago Polytechnic.

Neke Moa

Neke Moa

Neke Moa (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Ahuriri, Kai Tahu, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Tūwharetoa) is an adornment and object artist, predominantly working with Pounamu (NZ jade). In 2000 she gained a Diploma of Design and Art at Te Waananga-o-Raukawa and then furthered her studies at Whitireia NZ, completing a Bachelor of Applied Arts in 2007. Moa has exhibited widely throughout Aotearoa and internationally, as part of The Handshake Project 2010-2020 in Munich, Prague, Australia, Thailand and Holland. The Wunderrūma exhibition 2014-2016 and Festival of the Pacific Arts in Guam 2016. She was selected to show at Schmuck in Munich in 2015. In 2018 at the Crypt gallery in London in a collaborative exhibition between the Handshake Project (NZ) and the Dialogue Collective (UK) Te Ao Hurihuri - the everchanging world a conversation of makers and contemporary jewellery referencing 250 years since Cook’s voyage to Oceania. Her work from London was shown in a solo exhibition at the Dowse Gallery alongside new work in August 2019, No Te Moananui-a-Kiwa – stories from the Pacific. Over the last 4 years Moa has taught shell craft in Fiji and Tonga and continues to teach and learn as part of her art practice.

In 2010 Neke Moa’s work was exhibited in Toi Tū Toi Ora at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and she had a solo exhibition Rākau whakarawe at The Suter Gallery in Nelson.

Neke Moa’s work is in major public and private collections throughout Aotearoa and overseas including Te Papa Tongarewa, Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington, Toi o Tāmaki/Auckland Art Gallery and Tāmaki Paenga Hira/Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Nick Mount

Nick Mount

Nick Mount is one of Australia's pre-eminent glass artists. In a career spanning three decades his work has combined virtuoso technique with a keen instinct for design, freely adapting traditional Venetian decorative styles to his own distinctive sculptural approach.

Mount is best known for his oversized scent bottles, created with a combination of hot and cold glass working techniques. The components of these works are created individually then assembled during the final moments of creation. Mount has been at the forefront of Australian studio glass since the 1970's and teaches regularly at glass centres in Australia, Europe, Japan, the United States and Canada. His work is represented in many major public and private collections.

Mount has been awarded the prestigious 'Living Treasure' prize for 2012 by Sydney's Object Centre for Craft and Design.

See Mount in action here at the Jam Factory in Australia, making work for our exhibition 'Top Drawer':

Paul Mason

Paul Mason

When Mason started creating jewellery in the mid 1970’s, he did so intending to earn his living this way. He never saw himself as a jeweller, rather as a maker of objects. His father had been an engineer, and like him Mason developed an affinity for machinery. An innate artistic sensibility, an appetite for reading and an interest in Zen Buddhism led to an exploration of Japanese culture, aesthetics and attitudes to materials which influenced him over a decade.

He soon developed a reputation for superb craftsmanship in wood, bone, shell and metal, and incorporated precious resources like ebony, hardwoods, jade and precious stones.

After decades of focusing on larger forms in stone and bronze that explored his interest in the vessel, Mason’s practice has led him back to the jewellery. Despite this, his love of material, in particular stone is ever apparent.

Mason’s talent has been acknowledged in many way including Crafts Council grants to teach in India in 1979. He taught at Elam School of Fine Art in the early 1980’s, and in 1985 was appointed cultural ambassador by the New Zealand government. He has received several QEII Arts Council grants and many commissions, and has exhibited widely, nationally and internationally.  In 1998 he was nominated for the prestigious Seppelt Contemporary Art Award in Australia.

Raewyn Walsh

Raewyn Walsh

‘The jewellery I make investigates the attachments we have to physical things.  I am interested in the ideas that surround the collection, possession, ownership and function, and the subsequent associations these themes have with time and memory.’ 

Raewyn Walsh graduated from Unitec with a Bachelor of Design (Honours) in 2009. Raewyn was the 2011 prize winner of the Objective Art Awards. Raewyn has also participated in the mentoring project HANDSHAKE set up by Peter Deckers, in HANDSHAKE 2 in 2016 when Raewyn was mentored by Henriette Schuster, and in HANDSHAKE 3 in 2017. Raewyn has work held in the collections of The James Wallace Arts Trust and Tairawhiti Museum, Gisborne.

Richard Parker

Richard Parker

Richard Parker's work is all about energy. From their form and construction through to the tiniest changes in glaze, line and surface, these pieces communicate from the heart of their maker - energetic, passionate, humorous, and free.

Parker, now based in Northland, New Zealand, is one of this country's leading ceramic artists. Through both his work and contribution as a mentor and teacher he has been a prominent and highly influential member of the ceramics community.

In 2010, there was a major retrospective exhibition of Parker's work at Auckland's Objectspace Gallery that toured the country.

Roseanne Bartley

Roseanne Bartley

Roseanne Bartley is a New Zealand (Aotearoa) born Melbourne (Naarm) based artist jeweller, craft writer & design educator. From her initial art school training as a gold and silversmith Roseanne developed a research based interdisciplinary practice that examined the performativity of jewellery in urban space via studio, social process and public making; an expanded spatial approach she describes as facilimaking. Significant to this method are her use of surface archaeology, peripatetic process, makeshift accoutrements, and DIY manuals. Recently her focus returned to an earlier interest in text and her current work explores the relationship between language and jewellery - literature and making; concepts she develops through studio making, writing, and reading practices.

Roseanne was awarded a practice-based PhD from the School of Architecture and Design, RMIT in 2018.


Ruth Castle

Ruth Castle

Ruth Castle is well known for her woven works, black dyed rattancore Decorative Dishes with their elegant, precise centres, giving way to swirling designs captured in the edge structure, as well as her hanging sculptural forms using rattancore as well as other vines, lichens and other scavenged fibres that she weaves, curves and coils, collaborating to create sculptural structure and form.

“I don’t draw up formal designs, but often let the material take me where it will. I’m a great believer in the happy accident and will let my plan change mid-stream if a new idea or direction takes shape as I work.”

Ruth Castle’s work is appreciated contemporarily for it’s rarity, skill, beauty and longevity; while defying the consumerism of the non-sustainable and mass produced. “Baskets bring warmth and texture and pleasure into a home. They enrich our lives.

Care Instructions:
To Clean The baskets may be washed gently in warm, soapy water.
Dry in the shade in an airy situation. It is important that the basket is completely dry.
Oil the basket once the basket is completely dry to prevent the fibres from drying out. Neatsfoot oil is recommended but vegetable oil can be used.
Hanging the Basket in Bright Light Situations If hung in strong sunlight the basketware will fade very slowly.

As Ruth Castle says “the baskets will fade a bit if hung in strong light but they do fade nicely and it will take a number of years”.

Selina Shanti Woulfe

Selina Shanti Woulfe

In 2009 Selina graduated from Unitec Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Design majoring in Contemporary Jewellery. That year Selina was selected for the annual Objectspace Best in Show award. Since then she has been included in a number of exhibitions both in New Zealand and overseas. Her work has also been featured in a number of publications including Prezioza Magazine, 'Selina Woulfe: il corpo come materia da manipolare', published 2013; Scope Art Journal: Border Crossings, 'Skin Boundaries' published 2012 as well as in ‘On Jewellery: A Compendium of International Contemporary Jewellery’, Liesbeth den Besten, Arnoldsche Publishers, published in 2011. Her work has been acquired by The Wallace Arts Trust Collection.

 

Selina’s jewellery explores different rituals drawn from her mixed European and Pacific cultures, through jewellery and the body (skin and hair) connecting her to her ancestors. Selina’s early jewellery tested how skin can also be manipulated with the object, often piercing the skin, to push physical and physiological limits for both the wearer and audience. Skin is constantly changing, stretching, healing and ageing and natural skin adornments such as warts, moles or freckles are points of intersection for her jewellery and the skin itself, which, for Selina is a direct connection to both ones past and present. 

In the Silvergraft series Selina presents video and photographic documentation exploring the idea of rituals. Some elements of this work resemble practices of Samoan tatau. It often takes days to complete a Pe’a or tattoo received by Samoan men and because of that pain and scale the wearer enters a process of physical and physiological preparation. Drawing on this, the steel woven brooch like pieces are pierced onto the skin of the wearer, invoking a sensory experience for the audience as well. The form itself replicates the woven mats used during tatau ceremonies. The wearer of the piece must trust in the maker or master and also prepare themselves for a puncture of the skin. Not only is she drawing connections to both the past and present you learn that the process is just as important as the object itself. 

In 2014 with Bloodline Rituals we saw the introduction of hair and hair combs being used to contemplate Indigenous female practices and how they have become diluted overtime within Western societies. 

“Interaction with an object applies a special amplified significance and history to it, resulting in memories that become an essence and ‘soul’ that the artefact comes to possess. 

With Memoria, Woulfe breathes new life into discarded objects, their form and texture become connective tissue between the strangers who possess them - a new significance is re-appropriated and reborn from the imprint of the old.

This new series of adornment becomes an ode to the memories lost when inherited objects are passed on to a stranger.”

Serene Hodgman

Tāmaki Makaurau based artist Serene Hodgman (nee Timoteo) graduated BFA Elam School of Fine Arts, 2014. 

Serene embroiders and weaves silk ribbon on and through the surface of woven plastic mats, creating vibrant work expressing her identity, contemporising, and paying homage to traditional Pacific making practice. 

Heavily inspired by her Samoan heritage and upbringing in Auckland, Serene integrates traditional handmade crafts such as tivaevae (Cook Island embroidery), ‘ie toga (Samoan fine mats) and koloa (Tongan fine mats) into her work. Serene’s vibrant works use various inexpensive materials sourced from local emporiums to transform simple woven mats into a unique, vibrant contemporary artform.

Shelley Norton

Shelley Norton

The general concept that underpins Norton’s work is the notion of meaning and how we construct it, and how this fascinating production in turn, defines, supports and constrains us, in our daily existence. 

By taking the discarded or the lesser valued, in this instance the humble plastic shopping bag, Norton seeks to create pieces that engage the viewer, to draw attention to existing knowledge, whilst at the same time being aware of new ways of looking and understanding, to liberate a degree of free association in the conscious of the viewer. 

Roland Barthes described plastic as “abolishing the hierarchy of substances.  A single one replaces them all, the whole world can be plasticized…”  Norton finds these words conceptually vivid; transforming the discarded into the desired. 

Norton’s making practice spans 20 years and was further supported by undertaking a BVA at Auckland University in the early 2000s.  She lives in central Auckland. 

‘The notion of meaning and how we construct it is the foundation of my work.  This is a fascinating process, where often to cushion ourselves from the absurdity of human existence we construct cultural narratives around objects and ways of being that both define, support and constrain us. 

The little thought about floral sprays adorning humans like fancy packaging.  A nod to Otto Kunzli's wall paper brooches, one to Edouard Manet's small paintings of floral bouquets, another to fancy chocolate box packaging.  Pimping the package, plastic, the great imitator, still levelling and flattening the hierarchies of value.’ 

Signet Tags
Signum from the Latin for sign. Centuries ago a signet ring was a signature, likened to a finger print, and destroyed on the death of its owner. Technology has rendered this function redundant, but the signet ring remains a symbol to the world, showcasing one’s position and status. 

Tag – a small hanging piece from a garment, a label.  To tag – sign, name. 

 

The colour palette for this series (all bar two) is taken from Picasso’s 1932 “year of wonder” paintings.  The palette for letters ‘L’ and ‘R’ is from Venice 2, a painting by psychotherapist and artist Christopher Bollas.

Simon Lewis Wards

Simon Lewis Wards

Simon Lewis Wards is a sculptor based in Auckland, New Zealand. He works predominantly in ceramics and cast glass and is best known for his playful interpretations of iconic New Zealand brands. Wards has developed a body of work that seeks to inspire a sense of childlike excitement, oscillating between nostalgia and pop-culture, and often playing with scale to enhance the viewing experience. In recent years Wards has focused his development on his sculptural glass practice. His current series of work challenges expectations of glass playing with utilitarian forms like bubble wrap which he pushes to its sculptural limits. More than an exploration of Trompe l’oeil this latest series subvert associations of protection in a material that can be both strong and fragile at the same time. 

Wards’ first foray into glass was at 15, when he left high school and started working with a friend’s dad, John Croucher, who was an early pioneer of the glass art movement in NZ. His creative background was mainly informed by graffiti, with Wards and his crew becoming respected figures in the street art movement of the mid 90s.

Years later as a unfulfilled tradesman, but having always enjoyed working with his hands, his artistic vision took over and he revisited the world of glass.

The transition to sculpting and mould making felt like second nature. The idea for Wards’ initial sculpture came from the glass itself, when he noticed how much the raw material looked like a glistening confectionary. He hand-crafted a set of twelve jet planes in glass along with a ceramic paper bag and has expanded on this theme to include a range of iconic kiwi confections.

During his four years spent in Paris, Wards continued to develop his skill set to include stained glass techniques. After a period of relative isolation and introspection in the city, Wards returned to New Zealand with a clear vision for his practice. He set up a studio in a repurposed vineyard high in the Waitakere ranges, where he now works on a number of projects, including larger scale public sculptures, and his glass art practice.

Stevei Houkāmau

Stevei Houkāmau

Ngati Porou, Te Whanau a Apanui, Rangitane

Stevei's journey with uku started with a small pinch pot at a Wananga with guest tutors Wi Taepa, Manos Nathan and Baye Riddell in 2011.

From that moment on, her fascination, commitment and love of uku has continued to grow. Stevei is a member of Nga Kaihanga Uku (Maori Clayworkers Collective) and has been mentored in the early stages of her career by Wi Taepa.

Her works reflect the influence of her whakapapa and the impact and impression of her surrounding growing up in Porirua. You see a strong integrating of Maori and Pacific Island patterns that derive from Ta Moko and Tatau (tattoo). With a fascination and experince of Ta Moko and Tatau, She is interested in how these art forms are used to accentuate and frame the body while telling stories of a people…. past present and future.

Stevei has exhibited in many group exhibitions throughout Aotearoa (New Zealand) and overseas, and her work is held in national and international collections.

 In 2014 she participated at Kokiri Putahi – The 7th International Indigenous Artists Gathering and the Ngapuhi Festival. In 2015 she participated in a Cross Cultural exchange and exhibition with Aboriginal Artists in Qld, Australia and spent time working with Native artists in New Mexico and Washington State, USA.

 Most recently Stevei represented New Zealand at the 2016 Festival of Pacific Arts (FESTPAC) held in Guahan in May of 2016.

 Recently Stevei has started to cross over into other mediums such as print making and Tattoo.

Tania Patterson

Tania Patterson

Originally trained as a jeweller, Tania Patterson’s approach has always been from a more sculptural angle. It is no surprise that over the last 10 years the sculptural side of her practice has grown. Native flora and fauna have always featured in her mahi in a major way and in this latest series of bird ‘portraits’ it is once again front and centre. These works evolved from her previous ‘Confessional series’, where she explored her need to apologise for humans sins against  nature when out walking in the bush. In this series Tania draws on the aesthics of both the rich history of bird illustration in New Zealand and her love of natural history museums and taxidery displays.While each portrait seeks to elevate and honor the birdlife of Aotearoa giving it it’s due importance and prestige, there are echos here of a murkier past of musuem collectors and trophy hunters. 

Tania Patterson’s work is held in numerous private and public collections including Te Papa Tongarewa and Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.

“My designs are for the most part drawn from my fascination with nature. I have an interest in the museum experience of nature and a series of my work looked at the aesthetic of the obsessive collector. I very much enjoy the variety of processors involved in making, from the designing of hinges to cutting and soldering to carving wood and painting surfaces” 

Tegan Empson

Tegan Empson

Tegan Empson graduated from the University of Technology in Perth, Australia with a Bachelor of Arts in 1995, majoring in clay and glass. In 2005 she also gained a First Class Honours in Visual Arts from the South Australian School of Art.

Tegan has received many awards and grants including the Arts SA Project Grant to research and develop new sculptural work. Her work can be found in private collections in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Europe and the USA.

She explains her current series of glass rabbits:
Part portrait, part modern day idol, part worry doll?
These hybridized blown glass figures, were inspired by my Chinese sign the Rabbit, and continue my research spanning ancient to present day pop culture manifestations of human and animal forms.
From my desire to create work of an emotive nature, this series incorporates more human sensibilities by evoking the thoughts and emotions derived from simple movements and small everyday gestures.

Terence Turner

Terence Turner

Terence has always made things; using object and physical form as a language to communicate story.
Tere enjoys the capacity of certain objects to speak for themselves, via medium, form, and personal reference; and to hold their own place in time and culture. 

Tere has a particular interest in the matau/fish hook form, in particular the gill hook an example of indigenous knowledge. The gill hook is seen today as the pinnacle of fishing innovation and is a form that Maori had been using since before European contact. 

In his work with pounamu, Terence seeks to explore the fluid importance of the stone. The diverse and changing tikanga and oral traditions around the stone, as well as the stories behind each piece of rock, give it a life of its own that can be honoured and reflected in his carving. 

Terence has been working as a professional sculptor within the film and conceptual arts industry for fifteen years. He was Highly Commended in the New Zealand Jade Artists’ Society biennial carving competition in 2014. In 2015 he was invited by the Suzhou City Jade Carving Association to exhibit at the Zi Gang Bei exhibition in Suzhou, China, and was awarded a bronze medal. Tere lives and works between in Tāmaki Makaurau and Te-Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa, carving jade and other materials sourced both locally and internationally.

Thomas Carroll

Thomas Carroll

Thomas Carroll’s (Ngāti Maru, Hauraki; Pākehā) long time interests in music and sculpture, led him to discvoer and connect with Ngā taonga pūoro, when he began discovering his whakapapa, while living in Melbourne years ago. His pieces are the results of eight years of research and experimentation. Supported by one of the many networks of Ngā taonga pūoro makers and players that exist in Aotearoa, Thomas has developed a voice with ngā taonga pūoro that conveys the artform as a living and evolving entity. Open to a diverse range of materials that include bronze, glass, sand as well as a wide range of timber. The energy and love for ngā taonga pūoro is evident in every mahi.

Tom Moore

Tom Moore

Tom Moore, well known for his quirky creatures and ability to transform whole galleries into weird and wonderful dioramas, is a highly skilled glass artist. The playful nature of his work both emphasises and contrasts with the complex glass techniques used in its creation.

Moore writes: 'I try to give glass forms a fresh persona while working within a lovely tradition. I want work to be surprising and amusing. I play with arrangements of characters to create narratives with an emphasis on the absurd, striving to achieve an agreeable mischief and sorrow.'

Tui Emma Gillies & Sulieti Fieme'a Burrows

Tui Emma Gillies & Sulieti Fieme'a Burrows

Sulieti Fieme’a Burrows and Tui Emma Gillies are a Tongan New Zealand mother-and-daughter team that make tapa cloth and are scholars of the art. The duo’s art manifests their shared passion and close relationship in a hybrid style harmonizing traditional tapa with contemporary elements. Apart from adding colour pigment onto designs that are customarily black and brown, their work also integrates themes that deviate from the standard of geometric grids and floral motifs, often featuring themes of femininity, nurturing, protection, and spirituality. Burrows and Gillies strive to utilize as many natural resources as they can in tandem with modern materials. Tapa cloth itself is entirely decomposable, and the glue they use to paste each piece together is mixed with tapioca starch, half-cooked until the texture’s right. Their main modern adaptations in creating tapa art include Indian ink and acrylic paint. 

The mother-daughter duo have presented, exhibited, and sold their art to museums and private collections around the world and were the recipients of the 2018 Creative New Zealand Heritage Arts Award. They have works in collections around the world including The National Maritime Museum, Auckland War Memorial Museum, GRASSI museum in Germany, National Gallery of Victory in Melbourne and Pick Museum of Anthropology in Illinois, USA.

Vanessa Arthur

Vanessa Arthur

Vanessa Arthur is a jeweller based in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand. Her work often records moments in time, an excavation of the everyday and un-monumental elements within the streetscape. 

In the workshop, while cutting, hammering, constructing, she picture’s her jewellery inhabiting these explored spaces – a drifting trove waiting to be discovered, treasured and worn.

Vanessa completed a Bachelor of Applied Arts at Whitireia New Zealand in 2011. On graduating she was selected as artist in residence at Toi Poneke Arts Centre, Wellington, and awarded the 2011 Fingers Graduate Award. Vanessa was also part of Handshake II, a mentoring project. Vanessa is paired with Australian Goldsmith David Neale.

With the support of Creative New Zealand, Vanessa has been selected to travel to Munich in February, to exhibit with fellow Handshake Alumni at the Einsaulensaal of the Residence Palace during Munich Jewellery Week 2016.

 Unmonumental Fever - excavating the everyday.
‘I excavate small moments in time, capturing these through the jewellery and objects I make. 
The often overlooked elements within the streetscape are my muse: buffed walls, wet cement scrawling, fragments and objects left behind in the rush. 
An exploration of the marks we make and the mark we make. 
The biography of these objects, materials and spaces are what interests me. 
Uncovering the mostly anonymous and constantly evolving stories they collect.’


Victoria McIntosh

Victoria McIntosh

‘Born in Dunedin, 1971 

I graduated from the Otago Polytechnic School of Art in 1991 and again in 2005 this time majoring in Jewellery and Metalsmithing. Between times I have worked as a bookbinder, barmaid and picture framer, in a variety of cities around the world. 

A collector and hoarder by nature, I have always been drawn to objects that carry a sense of history. Dunedin’s second hand shops provide rich hunting grounds for overlooked treasure and these finds form the basis for much of my work. 

Tucked away in my studio I bring together the skills I was taught as a child around the kitchen table with those later learnt at the jeweller’s bench. 

I also have a particular fondness for spoons.’

Victoria McIntosh stitches together contemporary jewellery, sculpture and assemblage. A collector by nature, she is drawn to found objects that carry a sense of history, whether real or imagined. In her practice the BODY is seen as both site and subject. 

Welfe Bowyer

Welfe Bowyer

Welfe Bowyer is a contemporary jewellery artist based in Mahurangi East. Born in Wales and relocated to Aotearoa at the age of eight, he graduated from the Victoria School of Architecture in Wellington, in 2005. An award-winning student, Welfe has always been interested in designing three-dimensional forms, particularly physical modelling and construction detail design. When he relocated to Melbourne, he simultaneously began experimenting with jewellery while working in Architecture. Predominantly self-taught, in combination with skills courses at Melbourne Polytechnic, contemporary jewellery allowed him the perfect medium with which to conceptualise, experiment and create on a different scale to architecture. Bowyer regularly exhibits his work at galleries throughout Aotearoa and Australia and most recently was a finalist for the Mari Funaki Award 2018 with his series ‘2C’ / Twice Cast, a series of rings that experimented with casting multiple metals together in one piece. 

“I like to create hand-made textures with common alloys of Bronze, Silver and Gold and combine them in unique ways, often using found objects and playing off the strengths of one material over another to create a language that speaks of time, erosion, memory and how pieces might evolve in the future as they are worn.”

Wendy Fairclough

Wendy Fairclough

"Fairclough’s work is characterised by a distinctive visual language, instantly recognisable as the artist’s own, that at the same time allows her to articulate a diversity of ideas and concerns. Her understated aesthetic combines approaches derived from her background in painting, printmaking, sculpture and installation with a deep and abiding love of the materiality of glass. The basic building blocks of Fairclough’s work are common, domestic objects, transposed into glass by way of casting, blowing and cold-working. These objects form the basis of carefully arranged tableaux that blend a painter’s understanding of light, colour and composition with an acute sensitivity to the poetic possibilities of objects in space.” (Roy Ananda)

“In my most recent work I am drawn to objects and activities that are intimately familiar for most human beings in every culture or religion. The focus is on what we have in common regardless of external differences and extends to an interpretation of gestures and objects associated with the ingenuity and creativity of the human mind and hand in meeting basic human needs such as food, warmth and shelter”

Wendy’s Adelaide Hills, studio based practice comprises exhibition work, commissions and lecturing. She has exhibited throughout Asia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and Australia.

Wendy’s work is represented in private and public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Australian Art Glass Collection, Australian National University Collection, Museum of Australian Democracy, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Zoe Brand

Zoe Brand

Zoe’s work is a rare example of the use of text in contemporary jewellery. A Canberra based artist, Zoe’s practice reflects her interest in the language of materialism and consumerism, not purely in her witty wordplay but also in the processes used in their making and her choice of materials used (aluminium is a favourite). Her works look at ideas of manufacture and the concept of multiples and can exist as adhesive stickers, badges and even large sandwich boards. Her unique eye and talent has seen her included in MEDUSA – jewellery and taboos, 2017, in Paris and The Language of Things 2018 at the Dowse Museum, Aotearoa.

Join our mailing list
Stay up to date with news and events at the Masterworks Gallery.
No thanks