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.
