Location – Australian Design Centre, 101-115 William St, Darlinghurst, NSW 2010
Date/Time: 3rd Oct – 26th Oct, 2024 (Opening drinks Thursday 3rd October 6 – 8pm)
Organised by Bridget Kennedy for Australian Design Centre, the 2024 iteration of Remade-Reloved features 13 makers who have repurposed costume jewellery donated by the public, and other found objects into new pieces.
Remade-Reloved celebrates the opportunity for renewal. Each maker has converted the discarded and unloved into the precious – using less to create more. In creatively and actively repurposing, the makers present us with ways of writing new narratives and reassessing our meaning of precious.
ARTIST TALK – Saturday 12th October, 12 – 1pm – Join Artist/Curator Bridget Kennedy with Linda Blair and Regina Krawets,
FREE but bookings essential book here
Bridget will guide you through the process of upcycling and repurposing old costume jewellery pieces to craft earrings, a bracelet or neckpiece. Suitable for beginners, all materials will be supplied or participants can bring their own pieces to remake. This workshop is held in conjunction with Remade-Reloved, a group exhibition presented by Australian Design Centre. Tickets: $35, booking link here
Artist Statement
I have recently become interested in wood carving and took this as an opportunity to take wooden beads of various sizes and colours and remake them. This involved carving into the beads to create new surfaces and cutting, sanding and repainting the beads. It has been an interesting process rethinking how these beads can be changed in ways that make them wearable in new ways.
Artist Bio
Linda studied Jewellery and Object Design and Jewellery Manufacturer at the Design Centre Enmore. Her practice has largely been based around enamelled jewellery and small scale sculpural objects based on history or the natural world. After recently undertaking wood carving and surface finishing courses she has incorporated these techniques into her work.
Artist Statement
For this years’ Remade-Reloved I requested to work with glass seed beads. I enjoy the challenge of playing with multiples of a single unit to see what forms or patterns I can create. Each glass bead is a tiny treasure; in shape, colour and the way it plays with light. Using a limited number of beads informs the making process. The beads have been strung up, woven, and undone many times as I searched to find patterns of interest. This iteration shows the beginnings of dimension, and I am excited to continue this exploration in the future.
Artist Bio
Sian Edwards is a jewellery and object artist and maker. Taking inspiration from a multitude of sources, her work is defined by an interest in detail, repetition, pattern, and light. With a focus on animals, her work references both the rich historical use of animals in adornment and the actual animals that share our world. Her work is playful, illustrative, and at times delves deeper, undertaking anatomical material studies of her chosen subjects. Her approach to materials considers their relationship to the body through tactile qualities such as movement and texture.
Artist Statement
The box that Bridget gave me contained resources of a different place and time that seemed challenging and unsightly to me. Hopefully, I have resurrected some of them into something beautiful.
Artist Bio
Szilvia Gyorgy is an artist who works primarily with porcelain and light, and enjoys making things that are on the overlap of sculpture and design. She is happiest when experimenting with various materials and responding to the qualities they have to offer.
Szilvia spent her formative years in Hungary, but has been living in Sydney most of her adult life. Her works are found in collections throughout the world.
Artist Statement
The series Family Jewels explores the body and how jewellery is worn, where it is stored, where it might be hidden, how it can be stolen, or disappear.
A personal reflection upon family experience with jewellery and the body is represented within my late Grandmother Krystyna’s spencer, which shares her name to identify her garment, the wear her body left upon it, her hand stitched repairs.
Originally from Poland, with her husband and my father they escaped Germany and came to Australia in the late 1940’s. With stories of WW2, both personal and of friends, these works reflect upon jewellery that was forcefully taken, that was used for payments of survival and freedom, that was saved for, coveted, and gifted.
This series looks at relationships of jewellery and the body, on the body, part of the body, removed from the body, jewellery remembered, jewellery which may not be seen, jewellery hat turned out to have been taken, gone. The deconstructed spencer has visible references to the female body, parts of the body that are seen, parts that are not, with most of the jewellery, the family jewels, hidden.
My Grandmother was always sewing, (swearing in Polish) knitting, cooking, and nuturing the family. She smelt like wool, Nivea cream, and whatever she was cooking. She was also extremely cheeky, and this is reflected in this series. She always had her modest gold jewellery on, her spencer’s, her amazing hand knitted jumpers (many times mohair was extracted from her cooking), her aprons, and when she showed me how to make the fold in the faworki I thought that was magic, like making things appear, or disappear.
So, I saved my grandmothers spencer’s, no one wanted them, these are my family heirlooms, there was no jewellery left, it was gone, taken. Along with my memories of her, that is more valuable to me than what disappeared. Here they share part of her story, without her own jewellery, but with the jewellery that others gave away, with stories unknown.
This is the beginning of a series that explores part of my family history, starting with Krystyna, Queen of mohair, checkers, gambling, borscht, pierogi, faworki, the jelly vodka shot, and so much more.
Artist Bio
Pennie Jagiello is an accomplished Melbourne based contemporary jeweller who recently completed a Masters in Art at RMIT, titled: ‘Remains to be seen, worn and heard: an inquiry into anthropogenic debris investigated through contemporary jewellery objects‘. Her ongoing research investigates the objects we use & discard, and the environmental consequences of unsustainable practices. Her master’s body of work was constructed entirely from anthropogenic debris collected from beaches and coastal environs across Victoria, New South Wales & the Pilbara. Pennie was a finalist in the 2017 Victorian Craft Award, and recently selected for a residency with Form Gallery in Western Australia, which enabled her to visit the Pilbara during 2014-16. Her works have been exhibited nationally at selected Craft and Design galleries, as well as showing in alternative art spaces. Pennie is a short course lecturer in the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT, as well as a guest lecturer in the School of Art.
Artist Statement
My response to this bag of jewellery has been determined by the amount of “waste” I see every day here at Reverse Garbage, and our advocacy around reuse and the slowing of consumption, for a more sustainable lifestyle. This “fashion” jewellery we have been lent to refashion has more than likely had a very short life. Maybe only decorating a body for mere hours before being discarded or left in a drawer. The few glass beads I have enamelled onto hammered copper rings, from RG, for me spoke to less is more. It seems sometimes ironic to be making more from an excess – my choice to use fewer beads talking to the need to slow down consumption.
Artist Bio
Kirsten Junor has been with Reverse garbage since May 2015, when she joined as Creative Director, and is passionate about sharing her creative skills to inspire a new generation of reuse champions and waste innovators. When she can Kirsten loves to tinker, create and make with reuse materials from either RG or trying to reduce her ever growing stash of collected reused very useful stuff from home.
Artist Statement
More and more it’s harder to keep making and producing more ‘stuff’ yet we need beauty, and making calms the mind in the face of an uncertain future. For me the Remade-Reloved project is a way to connect with other makers, explore the circular, and create anew from the discarded and unloved.
This year continued an exploration of deconstruction, embedding elements in kiln fired enamel, but now also drawn to burning, melting and carefully charring individual elements…repeat…burning away the veneer of colour…revealing glass, plastic, steel…..repeat…melting soft yellowy metal balls…repeat…reconstructing and rethreading. Remaking…into something pretty? The pale blushing pinks of fake pearls, a remnant of time past, leaving their mark on the outcome.
Artist Bio
Artist statement
Exploring the evidential possibilities, I look at found materials beyond the randomness, and towards their potential as a mutable history. Like an archaeologist, who gently brushes and carefully caresses their discoveries, I attempt to honour and respect the people that went to fantastic extremes of manufacturing such utter pieces of crap. I pay homage to the people that bought and wore it. Yet, after spiralling in a thought loop, I bury it, cover it, “make” gunk with it, revealing the innate sadness of cheap materials.
Artist Bio
Erin Keys is a contemporary craft practitioner with 25 years’ experience as a jeweller, designer and educator. Working on Gadigal land, she teaches from The Bench Sydney, a jewellery school and workshop. Her practice is rooted in fiction, archaeology and prehistory, resulting in a symbolic configuration that becomes an aesthetic artefact of her urban landscape. Exploring the space between materials and that which is concealed, she collates memories and draws meaning from remnant matter. By mapping her body within space, she simultaneously assumes the roles of both archivist and interpreter, obscuring the distinction between a fictional and an archetypal archive.
Artist Statement
The Big Emo and Little Emo pendant play with the idea of dark tones with a bright eye peeking from behind a fringe.
Artist Bio
Inari Kiuru is a multidisciplinary artist, a mother of two young children and a Finnish migrant, working and living in Bulleke-Bek/Brunswick, Victoria. Her objects and images explore how humans in urban settings recognise and experience being an inseparable part of nature. Inari has Honours degrees in visual communication and fine art, and has exhibited in Australia and internationally since 2010, most recently in Melbourne Now, NGV 2023 and Schmuck, Munich 2022. Inari is represented by Funaki, with works in private and public collections including The Art Gallery of WA and Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.
Artist Statement
Usually the bags of jewels we are ‘gifted’ to rework are completely random in style, material, era and provenance. This year I was lucky enough to receive a collection of jewels that had had a single owner. It was labeled “Jo’s friend’s dead mum’s stuff”. Included was a note bearing the inscription: “To Dear Shirley! with Love & best wishes Jcke. 14.4.56”.
More than a collection of outdated and unwanted clip-on costume jewellery and faded, hand lettered felicitations cherished for close to 70 years – these were miniature repositories of memories, experiences, laughter and sorrow. The artifacts in the ziploc baggie invoked in me Milan Kundera’s version of nostalgia: “an unappeasable yearning to return”. Memories of my grandmother, her quilted housecoat, faded rose-clad bedroom wallpaper, earlobe dragging weights firmly clipped onto aging ears, post floral scented spritz of eau de cologne. For a moment I was back there.
Artist Bio
Having enjoyed a career in interior design, in 2021 Regina completed a Bachelor of Design at UNSW Art & Design and a jeweller’s trade course in 2023 to hone her technical skills and pursue her passion for creating contemporary jewellery pieces in fine metals that merge a love of architectural forms, colour and textiles to create contemporary objects of adornment.
Building on an appreciation of repetition in design and the belief in the maxim that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts that first attracted her to complex beadwork, Regina continues to draw inspiration from her urban environment exploring notions of its intersection with nature and its inhabitants, identity and belonging as well as issues of sustainability.
Artist Statement:
I look to the everyday for beauty in unexpected places, gleaning momentos of place, anchors to time. A connection is forged in this moment of discovery and at first this spark was a struggle to find. Thankfully a 24 hour rendezvous in Wellington, Aotearoa ignited this flame once again and I could return to the materials gifted to me for this project.
Te Whanganui-a-Tara You Stole My Heart, This piece began with a desire to embellish this intriguing piece of black weathered plastic I found along the Wellington harbour. I wanted to elevate its value and adorn it with the materials that I felt were intuitively drawn to it. This piece feels like some kind of underwater creature.
Hoiho – The Yellow Eyed Penguin, From the moment I opened the bag of old costume jewellery the plastic yellow beads held my gaze. I knew they had to be used. When I found a weathered L&P lid it felt like the perfect object to mark our time in Aoteraoa. This piece also includes nurdles and some black and yellow weathered plastics that I found along the inlet in Ferrymead, where I was working from. By the time I finished this piece the Hoiho had been voted as 2024 NZ bird of the year, it’s a big thing here apparently!
Hidden
behind black cotton fabric scraps for both pieces are the base metal chains
included in my bag. I loved their weight and that was about it.
Artist Bio
Regina Middleton is an Artist and Jeweller who resides on Wadawurrung Country along the coastal dunes of Torquay. Regina holds a Bachelor of Arts – Jewellery Design, Curtin University and an Honours in Fine Art, Monash University. The works made for re:made re:loved were completed during a 3 month secondment to Aotearoa, with the highs and lows of being the mother of two young energetic children.
Inspired by the natural world, Regina’s practice begins with collecting, predominantly drawn to weathered plastics/ marine debris/ flotsam and jetsam. These materials are then paired with traditionally precious materials, elevating their perceived value. Themes of femininity, consumption and grief are intertwined; enticing the viewer to pause and reflect, igniting curiosity and welcoming connection.
Artist Statement
Building on her history of repurposing remnant, waste and unwanted materials, Vicki Mason continues to use industrial waste, reclaimed household refuse and costume jewellery in discrete series of works. Being part of Bridget Kennedys Remade/Reloved initiative is a yearly highlight, a challenge to work with and reinvent these unwanted but precious resources. These works are tied to thinking about our need to tread lightly on the land in the face of ongoing environmental pressures and reference, seeds, ideas of biodiversity and pearliness of pearls in their myriad of forms.
Artist Bio
Vicki Mason (b New Zealand) completed a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Studies at the University of Otago and a Diploma in Craft Design from Otago Polytechnic School of Art (Jewellery) before working at Fluxus workshop/gallery with renowned goldsmith Kobi Bosshard. She was awarded a Master of Philosophy degree (Research) in Gold and Silversmithing (ANU) in 2012.
She runs production and exhibition practices, teaches, and interviews for Art Jewelry Forum, the international online platform for contemporary jewellery. Mason has been awarded many grants and awards including the prestigious Australia Council for the Arts Barcelona Studio residency in 2014. Her work is held in both public and private collections including the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts, Shanghai, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney and the Art Gallery of South Australia. She is treasurer of the World Crafts Council – Australia
Artist Statement
Garland: In my Remade/Reloved parcel were some strands of plastic molded beads. They were super cheap, like ones you might find thrown at Mardi Gras or as part of a dress-up costume- so mass-produced that they almost were a simulacrum or stand-in for jewelry. I wanted to rehabilitate them, bring them into the fold, as it were. I’ve cut them up into dyads and hand-woven them into a four-strand plait so they look like a lei or something organic, finished with an enamel flower. The last layer of glass on the flowers are made from crushed & melted glass from another bead in the parcel.
Wiggly 1 &2 : these two brooches were made from wooden beads and plastic Buddhist prayer beads from my Remade/Reloved parcel. The orange tubing was left over from a community project I was doing on Norfolk Island using recycled materials, it holds the light a bit like fibre-optics and I’ve been raring to use it in something. I want these works to flip between microscopic creatures and abstract pairings of materials, neither one nor the other.
Artist Bio
Margarita Sampson is a Norfolk Island based sculptor and maker. Her work is strongly influenced by her Norfolk Island background, referencing natural forms, patterns & textures, in particular underwater lifeforms.
Artist Statement
The re-use and re-working of carefully chosen and combined found materials is central to my practice. My work reflects the sensations inherent in making and wearing, such as the texture, colour and sound of materials. I am motivated by the transformative power of adornment and its ability to make a statement through the sharing of stories as a form of quiet activism.
The call to participate in remade/reloved presents a range of material challenges, a playground for exploring new techniques and ideas – things I have recently learned how to do, such as a shou sugi ban finish on wood, are tested out on new materials; alongside things I have always wanted to try, engraving into and inking a shell surface. The materials have come from the bag of things Bridget sent this year, my lemel jar and from some of the work I made for last year’s exhibition, which has been pulled apart and re-used again.
Artist Bio
Melinda Young lives and works on Dharawal Country. Her research-based practice spans jewellery and intimately scaled textiles reflecting experiences of being in and understanding place, underpinned by complexities of place-based making in contemporary Australia. She is interested in materiality – the traces of human and non-human interactions left behind on the body and the land. Exhibiting extensively in Australia and internationally since 1997, her work is held in public collections and included in numerous publications. Melinda is an Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture UNSW and undertaking a PhD in Human Geography and Creative Arts, University of Wollongong.
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