Containment - Uncontained by HSDCTC collaboration

Artist list

Petra Bishai, Becky Bliss, Isabelle Busnel, Nadene Carr, Laila Marie Costa, Judy Darragh, Amanda Flood, Sophie Hall, Nik Hanton, Mary Velvet Hart, Victoria King, Annelisse Pfeifer, Sarah Read, Margot Sevadjian, Mia Straka, Caroline Thomas, Timothy Information Limited, Maud Traon, Anet Wrobel, Nina van Duijnhoven

Collaboration is an important tool for many creative communities. From artistic romantics to creative peers and collectives, more artists can often be better than one. Connections and conversations allow individual ideas to expand as group projects grow the fruits of creative cross-pollination. Many iconic artists have collaborated with one another, seeking out both challenges and mutual benefits. Play and collaboration were integral to historic movements such as Dada, within which value was not necessarily found in the artworks produced. It was instead, in the act of making together to reach new and alternative perspectives.

In the HSDCTC collaboration, three art jewellery groups from New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Australia have joined forces to collectively explore Containment/Uncontained, reflected by the relationships between jewellery objects and themes of freedoms and restrictions. This exhibition encompasses the stormy journeys and the triumphs that sustained us in the face of a worldwide pandemic.

HSDCTC co-lab sprung to life during the 2020 lockdown, across borders and boundaries despite the planet being at standstill. At the time, Covid disrupted the traditional ways of presenting and experiencing art; the subsequent uncertainty presented participants with the challenge and opportunity to explore what a jewellery ‘exhibition’ could look like. Containment / Uncontained - working across borders started both as an experience and an expression of lockdown intimacy with its bounded restraints.

During 2021 the participating artists decided to populate the streets of lockdown-restricted Melbourne, Australia with sizeable imagery reflecting their first visual experiments into Containment/Uncontained. Big-size imagery adorned bollards with jewellery artworks provoked by the ideas of restricted freedom. The then-present strict rules dictated the visual nature of this project, and it proved to be an ideal start to the next venture.

During 2022, the HSDCTC co-lab continued to unpack the issues that were experienced during the global pandemic at Pah Homestead in Auckland, New Zealand. This time the metaphysical and tangible borders had somehow dispersed, and the collaborators were able to explore the theme further in symbolically inquisitive yet highly expressive ways.

The HSDCTC co-lab concludes during Nelson Jewellery Week 2023. Each of the twenty artists completes their collaboration voyage at the Refinery Art Space, Nelson with their dissected theme studies and jewellery objects supported by images, texts and video. In the run-up to Containment / Uncontained show finale this April, participants reflect on the themes explored within their artworks as they answer questions about the creative collaboration process that took place…


>> Interviews of the artists that participated in the project.