Mari Funaki

Bio

Mari Funaki (1950 – 2010) was an Australian contemporary jeweller, designer, metal-smith and sculptor. She was active from 1990 to 2010. Initially a jeweller, she moved towards "purely sculptural forms" from the late 1990s. Funaki was born in Matsue, Shimane, Japan. She moved to Australia in 1979 and studied painting and gold and silversmithing at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). Funaki was known for her distinctive arthropod-like brooches, rings and bracelets, which later merged into her large scale geometric sculptural works, some up to 6 metres tall.

Statement

I like to make my forms stir people’s emotions or imagination. As an object maker I have always been interested in the interplay and dialogue between negative and positive, between volume and space, between inside and outside.

Mari was fascinated by the interplay between positive and negative, inside and outside, she wished for the viewer to draw on their own imaginations and memories to create meaning, however it is said that she was inspired by the everyday happenings of life and the world as she saw it.