Alex Kinsley Vey

Bio

Originally from Hamilton, Ontario, Kinsley Vey received his early jewellery training from his parents before relocating to Toronto in 2010 to study at George Brown College, where he earned an Advanced Diploma in Jewellery Arts in 2013. In 2025 he completed his MA in Jewellery & Metal at the Royal College of Art in London.

He has exhibited work in Canada, Europe, and the United States. He was a finalist for the Enjoia’t Contemporary Jewellery Awards in 20222, and the recipient of the JORGC award for design in Barcelona in 2023. In 2025 he was the recipient of the Graham Hughes Award for Outstanding Student in Jewellery and Metal.

 

Statement

Alex Kinsley Vey’s artistic practice is a philosophical and material investigation into memory, decay, and working-class identity, shaped by his upbringing in southern Ontario. Drawing on lived experience, his work constructs narratives that are both autobiographical and critically reflective, primarily through the medium of contemporary jewellery. He approaches memory not as a fixed or objective truth, but as a series of emotionally charged fragments. These fragments function as memento mori—not only reminders of mortality, but also thresholds between past and present, impulse and consequence.

Central to Kinsley Vey’s practice is an exploration of how memory is embedded in material objects, particularly through the lens of decay and entropy. Steel—used both as subject and surface—bears this conceptual weight. Rust is a defining metaphor within his work. It operates as an expression of impermanence and transformation, marking the passage of time while revealing the instability of form and identity. Influenced by the writings of Jean-Michel Rabaté and Svetlana Boym, Kinsley Vey treats rust not merely as a material condition but as a conceptual framework that highlights the tension between endurance and dissolution.


>> A Moment of Danger series
‘A Moment of Danger’ examines the emotional landscape of working-class life through the material language of steel, rust, and image. Centered around everyday vices—smoking, drinking, scratch cards, processed foods and substance use—this body of work resists moral judgment and instead explores these habits as intimate rituals of survival, comfort, and escape.

Drawn from my own lived experience in southern Ontario, using laser-etched steel as both medium and metaphor. Chains rendered heavy and deliberately impractical, and brooches, bear photographic traces of social rituals often dismissed as failures—yet here they are reframed as responses to pressure, entropy, and choice.


>> The Third Death series
'There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.' – David M. Eagleman

The Third Death came from a personal place of regret, never getting to know my Opa before his passing in 2012. This series of photographic brooches is an attempt to extend his ‘Third Death’. His name is Oscar “Rene” Franz Ludwig Vey. From his childhood in Nürnberg during the Second World War, to his journey to Canada and his work in the metalworker’s union movement in London, Ontario. These fragments of his life are all that are left behind


>> Iron Identity series
Iron Identity explores my personal and cultural identity defined by the particular environment I grew up in. This identity is intimately entwined with the place itself. Rust, corrosion, a sense of neglect, the commemoration of a fading legacy, and the ability to endure are the concepts and visual language I express in my work.

Hamilton, my home on the shore of Lake Ontario has traditionally been a steel producing centre. Despite the industry having died down in recent decades, its industrial activity is still apparent. Iron Identity references my time growing up there, and the impact this place had on me. The culture of Hamilton was rough, the attitude grimy, and those characteristics greatly influenced me. Baseball bats, Metal shows and bus fights all existed alongside the backdrop of heavy industry. The working-class ethos and attitudes of my hometown shaped me into who I am today – for better or worse.
 

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