On 12 November we visited Sieraad Jewellery Art Fair 2017 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This year, there were over 100 stands! There are huge differences between these stands when you look at the kind of jewellery they show how the pieces are presented. You can find very classical pieces with a lot of gold and gemstones, but also very conceptual pieces out of unusual materials. You can really expect anything at Sieraad! Every year, there's also a main exhibition in the central aisle of the Westergasfabriek. This year, it showed jewellery from students from Idar-Oberstein Hocheschule Trier, Germany that have graduated over the past 15 years. This main expo, called Rockstars, showed a big variety of different pieces of jewellery mainly made out of stones or with stones in them. I think this was a great edition of the fair! A couple of designers caught my eye and from some I was able to bring something home with me to add to our collection. ;-) A list of the artists I particularly loved: - Loukia Richards: she and Christoph Ziegler organized an artist-in-residency-project with different international artists in Athens. Loukia herself presented beautiful hand embroidered portraits, inspired by classic iconography, made into jewellery. -Mia Maichen: she made beautiful pieces with quite graphic pictures of a rat she dissected. -Libby Ward: she used scrap materials from an old ceramic factory to create a brooch we fell in love with! - I finally got the chance to see the work by Die Vier (after unfortunately missing them on Munich Jewellery Week 2017). They're a collective of four designers: Catalina Brenes, Denise Ebert, Pia Groh and Julia Obermaier. This was the last fair they participated in as Die Vier, but I hope we will hear lots more from them in the future! - Primordiale: a brand that can be found on the border of contemporary jewellery and fashion jewellery and uses hardware to create great pieces. - T Squared: an Israeli brand by Tami Eshed that offers interesting, wearable and modern pieces with simple, but very graphical and strong shapes! Other artists I loved and will definitely follow in the future are: Konstanze Prechtl, Rachel Butlin, Francesca Verado, Cleopatra Cosulet and Anna Król. Besides the stands with jewellery, it's also very interesting to visit the stand or Ra Books. Here, you can find a wide variety of books about jewellery. I bought the new book by Marjan Unger and Suzanne Van Leeuwen: Jewellery Matters, a book on the meaning of jewellery. I've only just started reading it, but am already sure this a 'must have' for every jewellery enthusiast! The next edition of Sieraad will be from 8 untill 11 November 2018. Websites:
2 Comments
On 11 November, we went to 'The joy Of Collecting'; a manifestation organized by SSC and Current Obsession on collecting contemporary jewellery and collectors. It was organized as a part of the first ever edition of 'Obsessed, jewellery in The Netherlands'. The SSC's (foundation for Jewellery Collections) mission is "to protect and present private jewelry collections as cultural heritage and see them as an inspiration source for future generations." Current obsession is first of all known to many of us for their magazine 'Current Obsession', but also organizes several jewellery related events like 'Obsessed'; a festival that unites different jewellery events in The Netherlands during the month of November 2017.
The speakers during 'The Joy of Collecting' were: - Cees Leijenhorst, who had a very interesting talk about why we collect stuff. It was not specifically about jewellery but fitted right in with the theme! He talked about three kinds of collectors: the prince (who has more money and collects to show his wealth), the citizen (who also has some funds to be able to collect something) and the fool (basically a hoarder). - Mathylda Krzykowski organized two rounds of 'Design Date'; a format inspired by the 'Blind Date' game show on TV. Each time their was a fictional jewellery designer and three potential partners to form a collaboration with. During the first round, the three 'potential partners' had nothing to do with contemporary jewellery. Because of this, I think they couldn't really answer all of the questions completely, just by a lack of background knowledge. During the second round, there was more of a dialogue between the candidates, one of whom was Marianne Unger. This made it a lot more interesting to listen to. I think that the idea of having a dialogue on contemporary jewellery in a playful way is very interesting and the Design Date was a great first attempt and I do hope a similar discussion will be repeated in the future, but with some changes made to the format... - Judith Torzillo talked about her project 'Young Collectors' in which she interviewed people under 40 who (don't) think of themselves as collectors. I was very happy to be part of this second project of hers. She talked about why younger people often don't think of themselves as collectors and how they acquire their pieces. She also presented pictures of (parts of) these young collectors' collections and their interviews. I think this was a great initiative and hope to see more of the 'Young Collectors' in the future! - Liesbeth Den Besten talked about the way museums handle collections they receive or collect. Do museums do something with their pieces of jewellery or do they end up in an archive? They should think of ways to be able to show these pieces like the Rijksmuseum in The Netherlands did; they photographed all the jewellery and put these pictures online so everyone can look at them. Also, there's no copyright on these pictures, so anyone can use them without restriction! - Pet Van de Luijtgaarden is an artist who makes installations with big collections of different kind of objects and materials. Outside, he also presented a part of a mobile installation that exists out of caravans filled to the ceiling with collections of objects. - Lisa Whittle talked about digital archives; something quite popular nowadays. By tagging pictures with useful tags, they can help create connections you didn't think of initially, creating new groups that weren't there at first. She uses this kind of categorizing on a website on fashion, but it would also be applicable on jewellery. Being a collector myself, I hope there will be more manifestations, symposiums, discussion panels... around this theme in the future! And hopefully Obsessed will be a returning event next year! Maybe there will even be an 'Amsterdam Jewellery week' in the future...? Website Obsessed: www.current-obsession.com/obsessed/ At the moment, there's a lot of new jewellery to see at Gallery Beyond in Antwerp, Belgium! First of all, you can visit the triple exhibition by Mielle Harvey, Jelizaveta Suska and Alejandra Solar. A great show with a fantastic match of different designers. Each of them created their own little 'landscapes'. As you can see in the picture below, their work is presented next to each other. Even though they have different concepts, there's a coherent atmosphere; a dreamy and poetic one. Next to this exhibition, you can see pieces by Alexander Blank and Adam Grinovich, who were recently added to the permanent collection of the gallery. In my humble opinion, they are both great additions to this already fascinating group of designers! There are also new pieces on display by designers who have been in the permanent collection for a while now. Here, you can discover wonderful new pieces by Jillian Moore; one of my favourite designers at Gallery Beyond! Now is the time to visit this gallery! Trust me, you won't regret it! 'Till 26 November 2017, Antwerp, Belgium WEBSITE From 23-26 November, Gallery Beyond will also participate in "To Be"; a project in Antwerp where recently graduated Antwerp students will present their graduation projects at 43 different locations. Gallery Beyond will be showing pieces by Dabin Lee. |
Archives
August 2018
Artists
All
|