SHOW US YOUR ‘RONA
(a group show curated by Temp Contemp)
11 Nov – 5 Dec, 2020

And join us live with some of the 34 featured artists on Saturday Nov 14, 8am Sydney time.

Show us your ‘Rona!   What a sh**show of a year. Lockdown, lockjaw, social distancing, virtuality, so many screens and a nebulous continuum of time without movement. For some of us, anyway.  

In the midst of all of this, TempContemp were planning an exhibition with a different theme, all ready to shout out to the world. We were finding our feet as the new, ‘mobile’ TC project, and had been wholeheartedly welcomed to crash at Bridget Kennedy’s Project Space in Sydney… Then the world changed and things shifted… our theme seemed less vital in the current of uncertainty.

So we got together on Zoom, as teams do these days, and we wondered what contemporary jewellery, schmuck, bijouterie, joya, etc, means to makers and audiences in social isolation? And so we asked:   “Show us your ‘Rona?

What have you done or not done? Show us a poem or a picture or a film. Show us your heart journal entry, that time you lost your shit on instagram, the garden you grew? Show us your jewellery plans, ideas, experiments, failures, successes? Show us the playlist that got you through? Show us what it means to you to be a jeweller when the world is in lockdown? And what do you think happens next?”    

Jewellers, like other artists, see details: A combined visual and social observation of small things and symbols that can form meaning and experience. It is the intended site, on the body, that (arguably) identifies ‘jewellery’. The act of making and wearing these objects is symbolic, rebellious, thoughtful: commentary and introspection. So what is jewellery without bodies and in isolation? It can become process, therapy, repetition, memory, distillation of thought into form, fear or hope – or it dries up altogether and there is no jewellery: only the jeweller without vocation.   So many responded from around the globe. So many stories. So many objects: ‘Coronas’ reinterpreted, lockdown martinis, memento mori, obsessions, autobiography and political statement.  

With postal services interrupted and bodies banned – we couldn’t have objects. So, as is fitting in the new world of Zoom and distance – we see and share these stories of making and experience digitally and through image alone.   TempContemp and Bridget Kennedy Project Space present the pandemic works, thoughts and experiences of 34 contemporary jewellers.

Come, see our ‘Rona’s projected in the window at Bridget Kennedy Project Space, North Sydney; Online at tempcontemp.com and via instagram @tempcontemp, between November 11 – December 5, 2020.  

Participating artists:-
Adele Dani­­­ele (Melbourne AU)
Amanda Croatto (Melbourne AU)
Anca Nicolaescu (Melbourne AU)
Anna Butwell (Berlin DE)
Anna Paparella (Bari, IT)
Anneleen Swillen (Ghent, BE)
Caroline Thomas (Wellington, NZ)
Cecilia Lopez Bravo (New York, US)
Claire Vaganiance (Melbourne AU)
Constantinos Papadoukas (Athens GR)
Courtney Hogan (Melbourne AU)
Daniel Von Weinberger (Antwerp BE)
Danting Yan (Chengdu CN)
Elisabeth Drude (Vienna AT)
Grae Burnished (Melbourne AU)
Helen Clara Hemsley (Copenhagen DK)
Jin Ah Jo (Melbourne AU)
Katia Rabey (Moscow RU)
Kirsten Junor (Sydney AU)
Laila Costa (Melbourne AU)
Macarena Bernal (Auckland NZ)
Mando Bee (San Antonio US)
Mariel Elizondo (Nuevo Leon MX)
Marilena Karagkiozi (Parma IT)
May Gañán (Madrid, ES)
Michelle Stewart (Kinglake AU)
Nicola Hardy (Madrid ES)
Patrícia Harsány (Budapest HU)
Paula Mahoney (Melbourne AU)
Qiang Li (London UK)
Sarah Read (Reading UK/NZ)
Tamara Russell (Melbourne AU)
Viktoria Münzker (Pixendorf AT)
Vivienne Varay (Philadelphia US)

And join us live on Zoom with some of the 34 featured artists on Saturday Nov 14.

TIMES
08:00 AM Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
15:00 /3:00pm CST (Mexico/TX)
16:00 /4:00pm EST (NY/Philadelphia)
21:00 / 9:00pm GMT (UK)
22:00 / 10:00pm CET (Germany/Spain/Hungary)
23:00 /11:00pm EET (Greece)
05:00am CST (China)
10:00am NZDT (New Zealand)