Jan Donaldson

Bio

Jan Donaldson’s studio practice is based in Shepparton, Australia. She studied at RMIT University in Melbourne and holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Fine Art, a Master of Art (Fine Art) Degree,and a Diploma of Fine Art in Gold and Silversmithing. Jan exhibits regularly and her work ranges in scale from jewellery to large sculptural works. She is known for her use of the figure and text, as well as for her research into the relationships between objects and identity. Jan has been lecturing for over 30 years in regional Victoria and Melbourne, is a former President of the Jewellers and Metalsmiths Group of Australia (JMGA) Vic and past editor of Lemel Magazine, the quarterly journal of the JMGA. She has been an artist in residence and workshop instructor at numerous schools, universities, community groups, arts organizations and galleries. She is a former gallery director and has extensive experience working on community arts projects.

Statement

My work is inspired by the relationships between artifacts and identity and explores objects intimately linked to identity, considering image, form, symbol and meaning.     
I am also fascinated with the uncanny, which includes research and experimentation with dolls/puppetry and masks.These theatrical elements allow for the exploration of larger narratives, as well as the intimate notions of beauty, and allude to the drama and folly of human existence. I seek to recover a more sensual world, with all its shock, raw desire, clumsiness, illusion, and disenchantment. I am interested in finding an emotional conduit to issues of identity and self-esteem, social conditioning and its impact on identity and self-perception. I am concerned with the narrative - ‘To tell a story’; to become a vehicle for a voice, an impulse of character, to ensure the object acquires a life. When I am making, a kind of instinct comes into play. This gives me the power to give layers and dimensions to images and stories from the darkness. My use of found objects and recycled materials also influences the narrative. I am interested in the notion that the use of these objects captures and renews, not only the materials but the histories, memories and energies contained in them. I feel it is possible to harness the essence, the knowledge, and the life force, contained in the existing materials, as well as the opportunity to derive sustainability and contribute positively to the environment. As well as being interested in what is perceived as different, faulty, disfigured, damaged or violated; what contributes to one being physically or emotionally paralysed or alive, I am also concerned with what commonly connects us, what is seen as timeless uniformity and familiarity, the purity and perfection that can be found in the emotions of human life. The uncanny and painfully precise vision where bleak realism meets the surreal imagination – the incisive and uncompromising gaze that reaches and gets under the skin to witness the body with all its wounds and glory. My works reveal something of the intimate and personal. They are imbued with both historically generic as well as autobiographical associations; artifacts that are at once ‘canny’ and’ uncanny’ in their creation; objects to show our existence – a trace of self.

 

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