This exhibition explores the crossover of art into jewellery, and is the result of collaboration between Schwartz Jewellers and ten top South African artists. The exhibition, which runs at the Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, from 14 October 2010 until 4 December, comprises a unique range of artist-designed jewellery pieces.
Each piece has been created by a synthesis of artistry and the jewellery-making know-how that epitomises Schwartz Jewellers. The participating artists are Senzeni Marasela, Faiza Galdhari, Marco Cianfanelli, Walter Oltmann, Karel Nel, Dylan Lewis, Loren Kaplan, Norman Catherine, Diana Hyslop and Michael Frampton.
A distinguishing feature of each piece is that it is marked by the particular interests of the artist concerned. Marasela's work, for example, combines the story of her mother's life with her ongoing interest in dolls. A series of five necklace pendants, her jewellery pieces illustrate the various roles of working people, such as her mother, who came to Johannesburg from the Eastern Cape to find work as a domestic worker.
Both Cianfanelli and Galdhari are also concerned with cultural and urban issues. Galdhari's practice as an artist is rooted in her experiences and identity as a Muslim woman. Her jewellery contribution consists of an ornate bangle and ring. The bangle is decorated with motifs that reference the elaborate design elements found in Islamic mosques. Cianfanelli's two works, on the other hand, refer to violence and self-preservation, drawing on his interest in fences and the use of razor wire. As he explains, his pieces deal with the complexity of loving South Africa in the context of having to live with the need for security.
While Cianfanelli's piece refers to an aspect of contemporary culture, Oltmann's is inspired by cultural history. His piece draws on abstract geometric patterns found in African rock art designs. "Usually referred to as 'entoptics', these painted patterns are commonly found in rock art sites and are believed to derive from visions seen during trance states," he says. "Chevrons, spirals, lattices, zigzags, dots, waveforms and other shapes have been documented. I felt that the aspect of hallucinatory and spectacular vision in the form of these patterns could be interestingly linked to the visual splendour of jewellery, especially when realised in precious metal such as gold combined with coloured diamonds."
Then there are also pieces - by Karel Nel, Dylan Lewis and Loren Kaplan - that are inspired by nature. For his 'Art into jewellery' piece, Nel worked with two unusual objects - a Tridacna shell, commonly found in western Pacific islands, and a black obsidian stone from his personal collection of special stones and unusual articles collected during his travels.
Dylan Lewis is widely known, both locally and internationally, for his expressive renderings of animal figures, in particular feline predators. Lewis's initial idea for this project was a leopard's head, but settled on a translation of a line drawing of the animal to make a necklace. And for her contribution to this project, Kaplan has interpreted the distinctive seedpod of the opium poppy, a choice connected with her interest in space.
Active since the early 1970s, Norman Catherine's work is noted for its humour and biting social commentary, although it has become more self-consciously psychological and introspective over the past two decades. Catherine is represented on the show by two pieces of jewellery - a pendant incorporating his familiar pairing of cat and man, and a brooch, typically showing a two-faced man confronting a demon on his shoulder.
Hyslop's 'Art into jewellery' piece is a funky, contemporary brooch based on one of her paintings, The Protector, which shows a young man in a nectarine-coloured T-shirt. "It's an image of a person with a wolf/dog head, and represents how we give our power to something or someone outside of ourselves in order to feel safe," she explains. In translating the work into a jewellery piece, Hyslop decided to take her source image a step further and drew on the stars for further inspiration. Her brooch explicitly references the star Sirius, colloquially known as the Dog Star. "When one looks at Sirius in the night sky," says Hyslop, "it shines and sparkles with a blue-white light and, because of this, Gail Schwartz and I decided to use the blue topaz to denote light-points around the figure, rendering it as a celestial protector."
Lastly, as with Nel, Frampton works with texture and substance in his piece, a pyrite pendant featuring an engraved image of a female form that has been filled with white gold gilding. The pendant, which has a hole drilled into the front of the square base of the stone. The pendant is designed to be worn with a black leather thong that ties behind the nape of the neck and can be worn one of two ways: with the pendant in the front or without the pendant, or with the two Pyrites smaller tassles at the front or at the back of the necklace.
'Translations: Art into jewellery', curated by Isa Schwartz Gesseau and Gail Schwartz (who has overseen all the design and manufacture), is accompanied by a catalogue which offers deeper insight into the pieces, the artists and their working methods. The exhibition is a contribution to a trend that began in South Africa in the 1980s, when the boundaries between art and craft began to blur.