'Adaptations of Objet Trouve' jewels by New Zealand Jeweller Julia Middleton
Art Galleries
18th January - 4th February 2012
Information
Julia Middleton, a recent graduate of Whitireia Polytechnic New Zealand, explores the realm of abandoned technologies, offering up the dismantled structural remains of our precarious civilization.
Middleton takes inspiration from sources both empirical and cultural. Recent geophysical events in Christchurch, and worldwide, are referenced in the (de)structure of the pieces presented here. She hints at dereliction, of wreckage.
The pieces writhe and buckle. Metallic powders coat these artefacts suggesting ash or fallout, erosion and corrosion. The rings, like remnants of a long abandoned lunar mining colony, are contorted and aged, suggesting a kind of ‘future past’. ‘Con’ is pure cultural criticism on a finger. Middleton’s work is infused with a dark sense of humour and an uncanny newsworthiness.
The works are crude yet exude a simple grace, dual histories fused, redundant technologies are given new life. These are meditations, artefacts of paradox, anachronisms, naive and techno-talismanic.
Venue
St Andrew's Cathedral @ Cnr George and Bathurst Street, Sydney
Price
Free
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