Show Us Your 'Rona

Artist list

Mando Bee, Macarena Bernal, Grae Burnished, Anna Butwell, Laila Costa, Amanda Croatto, Adele Daniele, Elisabeth Drude, Mariel Elizondo, May Gañán, Nicola Hardy, Patrícia Harsány, Helen Clara Hemsley, Courtney Hogan, Jin Ah Jo, Kirsten Junor, Marilena Karagkiozi, Qiang Li, Cecilia Lopez Bravo, Paula Mahoney, Viktoria Münzker Ferus, Anca Nicolaescu, Constantinos Papadoukas, Anna Paparella, Katia Rabey, Sarah Read, Tamara Russell, Michelle Stewart, Anneleen Swillen, Caroline Thomas, Claire Vaganiance, Vivienne Varay, Daniel von Weinberger

We were finding our feet as the new, ‘mobile’ TC project, and had been wholeheartedly welcomed to crash at Bridget Kennedy’s Project Space in Sydney… Then the world changed and things shifted… our theme seemed less vital in the current of uncertainty. So we got together on Zoom, as teams do these days, and we wondered what contemporary jewelry, schmuck, bijouterie, joya, etc, means to makers and audiences in social isolation? And so we asked:

Show us your ‘Rona? What have you done or not done? Show us a poem or a picture or a film. Show us your heart journal entry, that time you lost your shit on Instagram, the garden you grew? Show us your jewelry plans, ideas, experiments, failures, successes? Show us the playlist that got you through. Show us what it means to you to be a jeweler when the world is in lockdown. And what do you think happens next?

Jewelers, like other artists, see details: a combined visual and social observation of small things and symbols that can form meaning and experience. It is the intended site, on the body, that (arguably) identifies ‘jewelry’. The act of making and wearing these objects is symbolic, rebellious, thoughtful: commentary and introspection. So what is jewelry without bodies and in isolation? It can become a process, therapy, repetition, memory, the distillation of thought into form, fear, or hope – or it dries up altogether and there is no jewelry: only the jeweler without vocation.

So many responded from around the globe. So many stories. So many objects: ‘coronas’ reinterpreted, lockdown martinis, memento mori, obsessions, autobiography, and political statement. With postal services interrupted and bodies banned - we couldn’t have objects. So, as is fitting in the new world of Zoom and distance – we see and share these stories of making and experience digitally and through image alone.

Come, see our ‘Rona’s projected in the window at Bridget Kennedy Project Space, North Sydney; online at TempContemp; and via Instagram.

Opening:
Live Zoom, Saturday, 14 Nov, 8 am.
>> Contact by email for the access link.
Opening Hours:
Wednesdays to Fridays, 11 am - 5 pm.
Saturdays, 9 am - 1 pm.
By appointment.