Talking Points

The backdrop for this exhibition is the boardroom table located at ANU house in Collins Street. We present a diverse range of dialogues, interests and concerns that have emerged through ANU gold and silversmithing studio over the last five years. The meeting table seems an appropriate platform for the interests of this exhibition presents, as it is a place where complex dialogues converge. Themes explored include cross-cultural enquiry, material and sensorial concerns and the intersection of diverse visual languages.

Historically, the terms Goldsmith and Silversmith have described a set of practices that engage in a highly controlled manipulation of metals. The term Goldsmithing has typically described the discipline responsible for the creation of fine jewellery and silversmithing attributed to larger scale ritual and/or domestic metalwares.

Today though the widespread advancement in material technologies, the skills of the goldsmith or silversmith are applied not only across an extraordinarily expansive range of metals, but can and do often include the highly controlled use of just about any material ... for example aluminium, borosilicate glass or even plastic waste.
What is the significance of our discipline today? The craft has also continued to provide a unique and sophisticated mode for expression and lens for understanding our world through practice-led enquiry. 
In a post-industrial setting, disciplines with deep roots that connect past with present - like gold and silversmithing - provide a valuable mechanism for making sense of and speculating about societies, cultures and environments that are continually under construction.

This exhibition is held in conjunction with Radiant Pavillion: The Melbourne Jewellery and Object Biennial.


Exhibiting Artists:

Current Students:
Haley Clarke, Matt Freeman, Da Ye Kim, Kristina Neumann, Nyx Mathews, Megan Stewart, Steve Worthington, 

Current Postgraduate Candidates:
Phil Agius, Bifei Cao, Lisa Chia-Liang Kao, Thomas O’hara, Gilbert Riedelbauch, Blanche Tilden, Bic Tieu

Alumni:
Alison Jackson, Simon Azzopardi, Zoe Brand, Robert Foster, Halie Rubenis, Lauren Simeoni, Phoebe Porter, Barbara Ryman, 

Visiting Scholars:
David Clarke, David Walker