Returning to the jewel is a return from exile

Artist list

Robert Baines, Karl Fritsch, Gerd Rothmann

Returning to the Jewel is a Return from Exile

Danke Lieber Gerd

Jewellery is exciting, but there is always something left for the wedding night

Gerd Rothmann – one jewel…….….object and body
Karl Fritsch – one jewel…………………gems and jewellery playtime
Robert Baines – one jewel……………………….linear worlds and history streams

A trinity of jewels
A trinity of duels
Three histories, one jewellery history

Three declare the present – what’s new in jewellery presence ?
Three deliver the present – what’s new in jewellery presents ?
Three futures – the world tomorrow, what it will be like

Why drink and drive when you can smoke and fly ?
Jewellery, the lion headed bee1 without the smoke and mirrors

Jewellery is like food. If you eat it you will only want more

Jewellery Amigos, Gerd Rothmann, Karl Fritsch and Robert Baines take us into unique jewellery territories and another trinity. It is the exciting goldsmith’s world of Memory (time), Place (topos) and Authenticity (bogus).

Gerd Rothmann’s jewels expose memory of body regions. He reminds us of person and occasion. Jewellery time. His transfer from person/body into gold and silver artefact is a transmission and reminds us of the primary source – the physical body/metaphysical person.
Jewellery place. The goldsmith’s process takes us back in time. Jewellery history.
Karl Fritsch takes us to the ‘gem set jewel’. Jewellery place. Echoes of historic mounted jewels, encrusted, mounted and trapped-bezels grains and claws. His new ‘gem set duels’ remind us of old ‘gem set jewels’. Jewellery history. He builds his own codes in his jewellery playtime. Jewellery time.
It is an individualistic transactional pursuit, attacking the common place jewellery and building a new cosmic order. Jewellery place.
Historic locations are visited by goldsmith Robert Baines. Jewellery history. Jewellery the document of history is waiting to be transported into the present. Jewellery time. It is true the goldsmith can transform jewellery. Jewellery becomes a ‘time machine’. Jewellery is the new transformer.Jewellery place.

Abdominal places are visited and recorded by the goldsmith Gerd Rothmann. Private, intimate and public body places are the topography of abdomen to be mapped and transposed into precious record.
Karl Fritsch chooses the ring, a jewellery type and announces it as topos and place, to declare finger printed jewels. It is place for capturing and positioning gems. His account is entrapment of faceted gems in simplicity and complexity.
The topography of the historic jewel awaits examination by Robert Baines. The landscape of the jewellery is data for the material scientist and goldsmith. Mode of manufacture, processes of making and worker’s idiosyncrasies are narratives of the jewellery landscape. Wire networks are constructed to capture space.

Gerd Rothmann offers authentic readings of body places. His empowered accuracy and technical virtuosity declares a transcendancy beyond metal back to intimate body places. He has frozen the moment. The magical moment has a new reality, a jewellery reality. Bogus gems sit beside authentic gems. This is the decision of Karl Fritsch and within his egalitarian jewellery there is equal status. He empowers the fake. Moulded faceted glass, heat treated stones, plastic jewels, chemically altered, simulated and the genuine all sit together in authentic harmony.
Historic and cultural locations are jewellery pasture for Robert Baines. The configuration of iconography, technical factors in the manufacture and appropriate gold and silver alloys can all be observed and replicated. They can all be correct, authentic and even verified.
But there is some impediment or intrusion into the paradigm that alludes to the bogus. It seems something is not right about this piece!
Is there a new jewellery history?


Three jewellery Amigos, three visions, many jewels.


Robert Baines, Melbourne 2009