Gone Astray. Jewellery and Utensils on the Fringe of Reason in Contemporary Gold and Silversmithing at CODA Museum

Artist list

Tobias Alm, Sawa Aso, Astrid Becksteiner-Rasche, Naama Bergman, Tobias Birgersson, Beatrice Brovia, Nicolas Cheng, David Clarke, Kanako Ebisawa, Ute Eitzenhöfer, Åsa Elmstam, Anne Fischer, Nils Hint, Karolina Hägg, Katerina Jirsowa, Junwon Jung, Anders Ljungberg, Katerina Michalkova, Myra Mimlitsch-Gray, Eija Mustonen, Markus Pollinger, Karen Pontoppidan, Anna Rikkinen, Hans Stofer, Vivi Touloumidi, Tarja Tuupanen, Luzia Vogt, Stella Wanisch, Jing Yang

Opening: The exhibition will be opened on Friday 17 May by CODA director Carin Reinders and curator Ellen Maurer-Zilioli.
If you would like to attend the opening, please register via the green button at www.coda-apeldoorn.nl/goneastray.


Gone Astray – Jewellery and Utensils on the Fringe of Reason is a collaboration between CODA Museum Apeldoorn and Ellen Maurer-Zilioli; an exhibition bringing together works by twenty-nine artists from both the Netherlands and abroad, on view at CODA from 17 May to 22 September 2024. In more than 150 objects, it shows how these makers expand and adapt the traditional rules or clichés of jewelry making, at times diverging from them entirely. It plays provocatively on our expectations concerning objects, encouraging us to look at the world differently – sometimes with a smile, at others with a raised eyebrow, but always firmly shaking the dust from the familiar and comforting.

Jewellery is a wide-ranging field both in scale and complexity. Extending from small, minimalist rings to large vessels and tableware. It spans everything from classical gold and gemstone pieces to innovative creations that make artistic, idealistic, and sometimes even political statements. Without exception, all of the artists in Gone Astray have trained as jewelers. But this generation ​​is no longer concerned solely with prestige and beauty, or with perfection and functionality. The work in this collection represents neither an academic exercise nor the study of form for its own sake: it has a tangible​,​ underlying urgency, reflecting a need for essential innovation and social engagement. From the relative solitude of their studios, artists seek ways of relating to a shifting world undergoing change on many fronts. Within their work, they draw on a wide range of disciplines, techniques, and visual codes, directed toward an arrival at unexpected perspectives and unpredictable solutions. Notably, however, traditional craftsmanship persists in playing a dominant role in their working methods.

The choice of materials acts as yet another source of inspiration, with many investigating the possibilities of substances such as salt, sugar, textiles, marble, and plastic. Just as the precious metals and gemstones typically employed in classical jewelry, these alternative media have their own specific characteristics and meanings that contribute to the overall narrative. Even the use of waste materials, in the widest sense of the word, adds a whole new dimension to the concept of recycling.

The artists in this exhibition share striking perspectives and surprising innovations, offering us ideas and solutions for problems that we didn’t even realize existed. Together, they seek the path to a distinctly different, more beautiful, and perhaps even a better world.


About CODA 
CODA focuses on local and regional heritage, and contemporary art and design. It also holds over 10,000 items of modern jewelry, the world’s largest museum collection of its kind, tracing the development of this art form from the 1960s to the present day. The museum shows jewelry in all its forms: from artists’ pieces that are miniature sculptures in their own right to fashion jewelry where the wearer is at least as important as the maker. Its exhibitions explore the interaction between jewelry and fashion, design, innovation, technology, craftsmanship, and other forms of visual art. 

About Ellen Maurer-Zilioli
Ellen Maurer-Zilioli studied art history, history, and anthropology at the universities of Munich and Basel. She works as a curator, author, and art consultant, and has a large number of exhibitions, publications, and other projects to her name. In 2016, CODA worked with Zilioli and Museum Villa Stuck on Private Confessions, an exhibition at CODA Museum featuring drawings and jewelry by ​​​​approximately thirty-five artists from the Netherlands and elsewhere. The Gone Astray exhibition has previously been held at Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, in Germany.