A biennale for jewels and crowns

Jewellery made out of used sticking plasters? Believe it. They are on show at a jewellery biennale, as GILBERT WONG finds.

Bald definitions in art can vex. When artist Deborah Crowe was asked to curate the Fourth New Zealand Jewellery Biennale, it was suggested that she consider the phrase "wearable art."

She rejected it. "I don't like the term. We have preconceptions about it that are quite limiting. It may be that the phrase relates more to costume or theatrical, over-the-top garments," says Crowe, senior lecturer at the Manukau School of Visual Arts, University of Auckland.

Instead she wanted the biennial snapshot of contemporary jewellery to stay true to the craft but raise issues about how society perceives jewellery.

To borrow her phrase, jewellery punctuates the body and that's why the exhibition is called Grammar: Subjects and Objects, a translation of the silent language that jewellery speaks.

Featured in the show are works from artists like Christopher Braddock and Yuk King Tan who are not regarded as jewellers, nor is their work classified as such in the exhibition. Their works are there because of the ideas they raise about how we use jewellery.

Equally there are works from those like Andrea Daly and Warwick Freeman who would firmly call themselves jewellers, but their work is designed more to stimulate thought than serve as simple adornment.

For Crowe, jewellery and grammar share something. They both serve as intermediaries. Grammar provides the structure for language, allowing us to order words as subject, object, clause and phrase; jewellery represents the multitude of relationships between wearer, maker, giver and viewer.

Crowe believes where a piece of jewellery is worn can alter our perceptions of what the wearer intends.

Tan's work The Mirror Stage employs jewellery chains to spell out text, at the same time making a comment on the hierarchy we have about jewellery. Daly coated used sticking plasters with gold leaf to prepare Body Dirt, confounding our expectation of what jewellery should be with the juxtaposition of the disgusting and the valuable.

Peter Deckers' Now Then, who owns what...? layers sound recordings of factual and fiction histories associated with items like wedding rings.

Others in the exhibition include Pauline Bern, who won the Thomas Gold Foundation Gold Award last year, Lisa Reihana, John Edgar and Nicky Hastings-McFall.

Crowe looked at the work of more than 80 artists before making her selection. Even after that experience she's not prepared to make a bald statement on where she thinks jewellery is heading.

She notes that New Zealand jewellers continue to show a diversity of approach and materials.

"I suppose what I was hoping to do was show that there is also a good diversity of ideas about what jewellery is and the functions it serves."

* The 4th New Zealand Jewellery Biennale, Dowse Museum, Lower Hutt until August 12. The exhibition will be at the Auckland Art Gallery in November.