Works by: Adele Daniele, Amanda Croatto, Anca Nicolaescu, Anna Butwell, Anna Paparella, Anneleen Swillen, Caroline Thomas, Cecilia Lopez Bravo, Claire Vaganiance, Constantinos Papadoukas, Courtney Hogan, Daniel Von Weinberger, Elisabeth Drude, Grae Burnished, Helen Clara Hemsley, Jin Ah Jo, Katia Rabey, Kirsten Junor, Laila Costa, Macarena Bernal, Mando Bee, Mariel Elizondo, Marilena Karagkiozi, May Gañán, Michelle Stewart, Nicola Hardy, Patrícia Harsány, Paula Mahoney, Qiang Li, Sarah Read, Tamara Russell, Viktoria Münzker & Vivienne Varay.

 

Song: ‘Décolletage’ by Adele Daniele.

 

What a shitshow 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 33 contemporary jewellers.