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2012 – February – 'In Geometry I trust' – Melissa Cameron

Award winning Australian jewellery artist, Melissa Cameron, presents new work for her solo show, inspired by geometry, from the regular rhythmic patterns of architecture to the seemingly random fractals of nature.

“I regard myself as the architect of my own worldview. Yet, like most of us, the foundations of my knowledge are based on truths discovered by others.
Using a code of point and line, on what amounts to an invisible – and borderless – plane, I create plans for jewellery in AutoCad.
To do this work, I accept and use the tenets of Cartesian geometry, almost without question. But how can I rely on this system, when I don’t know exactly how it all works?
I decided to go right back to basics. I sought to rediscover the truths that allow my works to materialise, beginning at the point where philosopher and mathematician René Descartes thought himself, and then the blank plane, into existence.
The drawings, as arranged before you, are the result of this search.

In geometry I trust”.

– Melissa Cameron, February 2012

Melissa works to draw people toward, and then into, her works of jewellery. As in built space, she has found that the ordering of the layers, as well as the patterns themselves, lead the eye on a journey through the jewellery piece. The complexity of the work aims to engage the viewer by making patterns that are hard to apprehend in a single glance. Prolonged attention is rewarded via the tension at play in the piece, a literal tension that comes from the way the pieces are strung together. When deliberately slackened the steel cable can allow layers of the pattern to move, making it seem as if the jewel has come alive.

Using CAD programs, Melissa conceives patterns using the tools of Euclidean geometry, these being translation, rotation and reflection, with which she also incorporates the function of scaling – self-similarity at shifted scales – the fractal influence. She then produces these drawings onto various metals, often steel, which she sandblasts and blackens, and releases them into the three dimensional form through sawing and threading steel cable through the layers creating a tension and delicacy to the piece.

In this exhibition, an intricate pattern is created, and then broken up, with elements forming earrings, pendants, neckpieces and brooches. Colour is brought into the pieces through the application of enamel.

Please join us for celebration drinks Saturday 3rd March 4-6pm