Essay: The Familiar in the Foreign

Essay: The Familiar in the Foreign
Lisa Cahill, CEO and Artistic Director, Australian Design Centre

Australian Design Centre (ADC) is an independent, not for profit contemporary craft and design organisation based in Sydney on the lands of the Gadigal People. ADC’s role is a nexus between developing excellence and awareness of the creative industries and encouraging community participation and creative fulfilment through making and engaging in craft practices.

Since 1964, ADC has supported and promoted the best of Australia’s designer makers, presenting their work and connecting them to an appreciative nation-wide audience through touring exhibitions, public programs, publications, and special events. Dedicated to craft and design practice today, the Centre produces exceptional programming with many new recent initiatives: special exhibitions for major events including the annual Sydney Craft Week Festival; and the inaugural national MAKE Award: Biennial Prize for Innovation in Australian Craft and Design. ADC takes a considered, agile approach to meeting the needs of our community and give creative practitioners space to tell their stories, to tackle issues through a creative lens and, in doing so, to build their practice, their audience and their voice.

Australian Design Centre Australian Design Centre (ADC) has a long history of exhibiting contemporary jewellery. Robert Baines: Metal, Marion Hosking: Jewellery and Lola Greeno: Cultural Jewels are significant exhibitions in the Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft series that have toured extensively across Australia. The next exhibition in the series to launch in 2025 is Helen Britton: The Story So Far. Another significant touring exhibition is Art on a String: Aboriginal Threaded Objects from the Central Desert and Arnhem Land. In 2017 we presented Bulay(i):Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Artists with Indigenous Jewellery Project featuring 40 Yolngu jewellers and our touring exhibition Obsessed: Compelled to make features the work of two prominent contemporary jewellers, Dr Oliver Smith and Kath Inglis. ADC also presents Profile a biennial award exhibition in partnership with the Jewellery and Metalsmiths Group of Australia, NSW. Made/Worn: Australian Contemporary Jewellery was a major exhibition ADC curated, with a team of respected curatorial advisors, for tour from 2018 to 2021. From intimate pieces to large scale works, the contemporary jewellery in Made/Worn explored the act of making and how jewellery is worn on the body telling stories that start with the artist and continue through the life of the object worn or experienced, creating new resonances with owners into the future. Spanning a wide range of materials, techniques and meanings, the works were playful, intricate, conceptual, personal and political. The artists engaged with themes of place, sustainability in materials and identity. The project included performative or interactive elements, to give audiences the opportunity for creative participation and to understand that jewellery is an act of art, craft and design that also lives and breathes on the bodies of those who wear it.

Through these exhibitions we have endeavoured to chart the development of a particularly Australian aesthetic in this art form to show the exceptional craft practice, innovative use of materials, sense of place and sources of inspiration for Australian artists.

The initial research for Made/Worn was built on the book Place and Adornment: A history of contemporary jewellery in Australia and New Zealand by Damian Skinner and Kevin Murray. This seminal work considered how place and history have shaped studio jewellery practice in this part of the world. This opportunity to exhibit Australian artists alongside work of artists from New Zealand for this exhibition in Munich, has enabled ADC to once again focus on what makes Australian work foreign yet familiar in this international context.Helen Britton and I have selected artists for this exhibition from the East and West of Australia. Many of the artists are Indigenous Australians whose ancestors have called this place home for more than 60,000 years. Others have followed a European model of contemporary studio practice with a focus on place and materiality that makes their work unique. All the artists are interested in stories, making work to tell stories about Country, about urban living and about responses to global concerns.

Virginia Keft is a proud Muruwari woman, living and working on Dharawal Country (Wollongong) and Gadigal Country (Sydney). She writes that her work Women’s Business speaks to themes of Country, motherhood and culture - concepts that are integral to the artist’s identity as an Aboriginal woman of the Muruwari Nation. The motif of the Matjam (Flying Fox) celebrates connection to place and community. The woven bats are created using ancient techniques passed from Elders to the artist; emphasising that Culture persists. The silk is dyed by a process of botanical printing which uses the natural tannins and pigments in the leaves, seeds, and barks from Australia’s native plants. Leaves and plants such as Eucalyptus have been a rich source of colour for Aboriginal peoples for centuries. The nurrunji (emu) feathers represent abundance and protection”.

Like Virginia Keft, Carly Takari Dodd, David Doyle, Lisa Waup, Dominic White, Nicole Monks, Lucy Simpson and Lola Greeno are all Indigenous artists telling unique stories of their cultural connections to Country. The materials they use in their work are integral to the important statements they make about their responsibilities to Country and tradition in a contemporary world. Responsibility that transfers to the wearers to carry these messages into the world creating understanding and care.

Oliver Smith draws on the long tradition of metalsmithing brought to Australia by practitioners from Scandinavia and Europe who have reinvented the practice for the Southern Hemisphere. “That this making occurs in Australia is significant as it is a context where openness, collaboration and originality can occur. The rings for finger, arm and neck can be seen as vital vectors of these creative links.”

Sarah Elson is interested in traditional metalsmithing and its use in contemporary jewellery practice. “This work celebrates the preciousness and resilience of native plants. The making of the work expresses admiration, joy and fecundity, but also draws out an awareness of physical limits; of my own fertility, my own growth and deterioration.” The Australian artists who are not Indigenous (Bic Tieu, Carlier Makigawa, Helen Britton, Justine McKnight, John Parkes, Liam Benson, Melissa Cameron, Oliver Smith, Roz De Luca, Sarah Elson, Zoe Veness) are also variously drawn to issues of caring for the environment, commenting on historical and contemporary social and political issues, material concerns and personal journeys of identity.

On behalf of all the Australian artists, we are honoured to be part of this exhibition, The Familiar in the Foreign, and we thank Galerie Handwerk’s Director Barbara Schmidt and her team for their invitation to take part, and their considered curation.

The Familiar in the Foreign
Galerie Handwerk Munich
12 March to 17 April 2025