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Friday, March 23, 2018

And the Winner is - SA Contemporary Jewellery Awards Exhibition 2018

The Winner
SA Contemporary Jewellery Awards Exhibition 2018

Joani Groenewald

Seven Deadly Seductions
Joani Groenewald’s work takes a satirical stance against popular-culture and consumer culture as experienced form within a South African context. 
In her latest series of works entitled The Seven Deadly Seductions, Groenewald is inspired by the religious concept of the seven deadly sins. The series humorously challenges the seductiveness of unethical behaviour, particularly within the framework of the current South African political environment. The pieces are personal interpretations and abstractions of form, material and colour. That take a satirical stance against popular culture and the consumer oriented lifestyle that so many South Africans have become accustom to. They portray negative character traits as jewels, which confront the meaning of status symbols. The work challenges perceptions through the influential symbolic power of jewellery, specifically as a means to communicate identity and social status.

Title: Envy (Title Image- above)
Materials: Oxidized Silver, Glass, Copper, Enamel, Plastic, Synthetic Coral, Cotton
Technique: Silversmithing, enameling, piercing, lamp work glass and mouldmaking techniques.

Title: Hopelessly Hopeful - three-part series
Materials: Brass, Glass, Copper, Enamel, Plastic, Cotton
Technique: Silversmithing, enameling, piercing, lamp work glass and mould making techniques

Title: Sloth
Materials: Silver, glass, synthetic turquoise, enamel
Technique: Silversmithing, enameling, piercing, lamp work glass and mould making techniques


About Art Jewellery
Groenewald views contemporary jewellery as medium through which one can critically reflect upon one’s social and political environment. Her research and art interests are based on memory and narrative studies; questioning the stability of them, whilst also challenging the traditional function of jewellery specifically in relation to a South African context. She continues to make art that feeds into and from these research interests.

About Joani Groenewald
Groenewald is a lecturer in the Visual Arts Department, as well as a jewellery designer, goldsmith and artist. She sees her technical grounding, as a medium that allows her to create conceptual art. She graduated with a Ba degree in Visual Art ( with a focus on Creative Jewellery- and Metal Design) from Stellenbosch University in 2009 where she later enrolled in the graduate training programme in 2010. During this time she worked as an goldsmith apprentice and eventually qualified as a goldsmith in 2011. In March 2015 she successfully completed her MA degree in Visual Arts from Stellenbosch University with distinctions. She was advent participatent of numerous, national and international contemporary jewellery exhibitions spaning her entire career in the jewellery industry.


The Runner-up
SA Contemporary Jewellery Awards Exhibition 2018

Mariambibi Khan

Interlacing Identities.


Mariambibi Khan chose to investigate gendered and feminine identities and its associations to metallic and lace inspired jewellery. Her inspiration is derived from the hydrangea in both its live and skeletal decayed form. This represented a complex contrast and translation of form, shape and function. She has incorporated textile technique of bobbin lace in jewellery. This allowed her to construct metallic lace pieces which embodies bobbin lace in contemporary jewellery practices. She also found that although a more geometric structure of the lace is used it draws attention to feminine and gendered stereotypes associated with design processes. Her related research provides a description of the use of alternative material of lace and lace jewellery, and explores the associated gendered assumptions. This is illustrated in the delicate lines, floral patterns, and soft, organic design motifs which are considered to be more accepted for the adornment of women. However, her main focus was to analyze whether the material and context used played an important role in feminine inspired designs of lace jewellery.


Title: Bobbin Lace: Interlacing Identities.
Materials: Fine Silver, Sterling Silver & Gold Plating.
Technique: Bobbin Lace.

About Mariambibi Khan

Ms Khan was recently appointed jewellery lecturer in Metal Art and Design in the Department of Visual Art at the University  Stellenbosch.
In 2015 she graduated with a Ba Hons in Jewellery Design and Manufacture from the University of Johannesburg (Cum Laude). She has comprehensive knowledge of Jewellery Design and manufacturing skills, obtained from working in the industry - amongst others, Elegance Jewellers.



Special Mention
SA Contemporary Jewellery Awards Exhibition 2018

Nora Kovats

Poeletjie

Kovats defines herself as an ‘identity-hopper’, due to her being South-African and European. She is interested in the way narrative constructs human identities particularly their overlaps and boundaries. Identities are infinitely complex and fragmented compositions, often paradoxical, fragile and fluid yet so powerfully definitive. Something she attempt to represent visually in the form of complicated, multi-layered structures in her jewellery and drawings.
With this particular piece, titled ‘Poeletjie’(Afrikaans for puddle or small pool)  she attempted to investigate her own fascination with water and its elusiveness. She describes water as “having the paradoxical characteristic of being immensely powerful (both as a force of nature and in its importance for humanity’s survival) yet also incredibly fragile, easily polluted and its systems tilted off-balance. It is mysterious, difficult to quantify. Water harbours some of our most profound fears in its darkest unexplored depths, and it is sheer gushing life and vibrancy. It carves away ancient stone with patient drops – literally shaping the landscapes that form our human stories, our identities.” 
She is drawn to enameling as a technique because of its uniqueness and its abbility to create spontaneity, dictated by the firing process. In this way she can achieve a feeling of fragility, fresh colour and a delicate, spattered texture that visually embodies the emotions water elicits for her.
Her thoughts were circling around different water themes for some time, sparked by news of the severe water crisis currently threatening Cape Town, her hometown, and the contrasting wastage she experience in Berlin, where dishes are washed under a running tap. She contemplates the links between water and human identities, how we are affected by floods, rain, drought, how we identify as river-people or sea-people or desert people. Water in itself can be seen as a metaphor for human identities with its perfectly contradictory embodiment of fragility and monumentality: water is an immensely powerful force of nature, yet so easily polluted and vulnerable. And like within herself in her existence - a dance between two countries, two cities - water succeeds in having multiple identities at the same time.

Title: Poeletjie (Puddle)
Jewellery Piece: Brooch and Pendant (dual function)
Materials: Enamel. Copper, sterling silver, steel pin, amethyst, citrine
Technique: Smithing, enameling, hand-sawing

About Nora Kovats
Kovats graduated with a BA and MA Degree in Jewellery Design from the Stellenbosch University. She was the overall winner of the 2013 Thuthuka Jewellery & Product Development Programme Competition. She has participated in a number of International Jewellery competitions including the Berlin State Prize Competition for Applied Arts in Germany.


Monday, March 5, 2018

South African Contemporary Jewellery Awards Exhibition at FADA Gallery

Philisa Zibi, Amaza (waves), Brass, silver, leather.
Hammering Technique.
FADA Gallery in partnership with CreativeFeel and the Contemporary JewelleryForum cordially invite you to the awards ceremony and opening of the SouthAfrican Contemporary Jewellery Awards Exhibition.

Venue: FADA Gallery
Date: Thursday 15 March
Time: 18:00 for 18:30

Guest speaker: Beverley Price
Art Jewellery Forum, Ambassador for South Africa

RSVP eugene hön eugeneh@uj.ac.za

Exhibition run: Friday 16 March to Thursday 29 March 2018

The awards exhibition will showcase finalist pieces selected from a national jewellery design and manufacture competition introduced at the launch of Africa’s first Contemporary Jewellery Forum (CJF) in the Jewellery Department of the University of Johannesburg in October 2017. These initiatives are premised on promoting jewellery as a creative medium for personal expression and providing a platform for the development of cutting edge concept and techniques while creating fine and distinctive art jewellery.

For many years South Africa has been a major player in the mining of minerals, supplying gold, platinum and diamonds to the global jewellery manufacturing sector while nationally there has been relatively little beneficiation of these local raw materials. A focus of this competition is therefore to encourage artists to innovate and create; to combine materials, techniques and finishes and to push boundaries beyond the obvious and mundane and ultimately to maximise the local economic contribution. 

Eric Loubser, 1700, Sterling silver, Found object, Fly Press Technique.

Contemporary Jewellers are in the unique position of being able to make work that crosses many boundaries - art, design, fashion, craft, engineering - and the intimate scale of jewellery and its close relationship to the body also make it a great vehicle for communication. There are many talented jewellery artists working in the country at the moment who often don't get the recognition they deserve, so these Awards are a much needed platform to showcase their work to a broader audience. Geraldine Fenn - contemporary South African Jeweller.


The awards exhibition aims to bring together established jewellers, including young and aspiring artists, in the creation of one-of-a-kind expressive or installation pieces. There are no limitations as artists are called upon to visualize and realise their ideas. 

The winner and runner-up of the competition will be announced at a gala awards ceremony on 15 March, 2018 after which the South African Contemporary Jewellery Awards Exhibition will open at the FADA Gallery on the Bunting Road Campus of the University of Johannesburg.


Lin Cheung, Delayed Reactions – Troubled Times. 2018  Brooch, 
hand carved rock crystal, 18ct gold

Pearl Necklace, In Black and White
2018, hand carved white and eyed
black freshwater pearls, 14ct gold.
International and local judges will ensure works selected will be deserving of their inclusion in this well-established niche market.  All pieces on exhibition will be for sale, presenting an opportunity for art collectors and the public to add jewellery to their collections. A comprehensive catalogue of all work on exhibition will be forthcoming, contributing to research and development in this field and stimulating much needed growth in this niche market.

Johan van AswegenTieroog Tiara Photographs - Jinkyun Ahn.

Exposure of the winning artist’s pieces and that of the runner-up in the April 2018 issue of CREATIVE Feel will gain them national and international recognition.





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