IWA: New Zealand makers at Frame 2018

Artist list

Vanessa Arthur, Jane Dodd, Warwick Freeman, Karl Fritsch, Shelley Norton, Alan Preston, Moniek Schrijer, Joe Sheehan, Lisa Walker

Iwa is an exhibition of nine featured perspectives in contemporary jewellery spanning four decades of local practice in Aotearoa New Zealand, featuring Alan Preston, Vanessa Arthur, Jane Dodd, Moniek Schrijer, Lisa Walker, Joe Sheehan, Warwick Freeman, Shelley Norton and Karl Fritsch. Brought together for Munich Jewellery Week, these practices articulate a relationship to one another as tributaries to a larger, transforming field of practice, each charting their own path through distinct relationships with narrative, materiality, history and geographic location.
 
Drawing these diverse views and approaches to our material landscape into conversation is emblematic of the complexity and rigour of current jewellery practice in New Zealand. It is a hand full of threads, rather than a single common theme, and an introduction to a wider intergenerational artistic conversation.

‘I see parallels in my approach to jewellery and the growth of the Rata tree.  These trees start life as an epiphyte in the branches of another tree.  As it grows the epiphyte rata sends roots down to the ground.’ Karl Fritsch