R.A.w artist Bios
Vanessa Arthur
Vanessa Arthur is a jeweller based in the Hawke’s Bay. Her work is often influenced by daily travels; imperfect and impermanent objects, fragments and facades. In the workshop, while cutting, hammering, constructing, she picture’s her jewellery inhabiting these explored streetscapes – a drifting trove waiting to be discovered, treasured and worn.
Vanessa is currently a participant in Handshake2, a project pairing 13 emerging New Zealand jewellers with their chosen mentor. Australian jeweller David Neale is mentoring Vanessa over a two-year period.
Maca Bernal
Maca Bernal was born in Chile and is a New Zealand resident. She took her first lessons in jewellery at a very young age, she has a Bachelors Degree in fine arts and sits at the bench of a busy Parnell jewellery shop. Her work brings together her knowledge of sculpture, and volume, with her experience making and repairing fine jewellery.
Bernal is currently studying towards a contemporary jewellery diploma at Manukau Institute of Technology, Faculty of Creative Arts.
Becky Bliss
Becky Bliss graduated from Whitireia New Zealand in 2010. Her early ‘Palimpsest’ and ‘Pentimento’ series looked at traces of the past using subtle layering to evoke memories of what has been before. More recently, the ‘Penumbra’ series looks at spaces created around the shadows of simple shapes. Bliss was a participant in the Handshake1 project, exhibited in the New Zealand/Germany show Wunderrūma, and most recently was an exhibitor in Schmuck 2015 in both Munich and Prague. She is a member of Wellington-based Occupation:Artist.
Zoe Brand
Zoe Brand started her professional career selling rather expensive writing instruments and occasionally the odd pencil in her hometown of Brisbane. Needless to say this wasn’t awe inspiring stuff, so in 2005 she moved to Sydney and it was there that she found her calling, the making, wearing and viewing of contemporary art jewellery. Since then she has graduated with an Advanced Diploma in Jewellery and Object Design, worked in galleries, made some jewellery, curated shows, written words and drunk plenty of beer. Zoe is currently studying a Bachelor of Visual Arts majoring in Gold and Silversmithing at the Australian National University in Canberra.
In 2013 Zoe opened a gallery in her bedroom and online called Personal Space Project.
Maker Wearer Viewer - Blog
Nadene Carr
Carr studied at Manukau School of Visual Arts from 2004-2009 majoring in contemporary jewellery and graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts, Auckland University.
In 2009 she received the Fingers Graduation award for top contemporary jewellery student and in 2010 she was a finalist in the contemporary jewellery Regal Casting Design Awards.
Fran Carter
Fran Carter has recently completed a Bachelor of Applied Arts, majoring in contemporary jewellery at Whitireia NZ. She is now embarking on a graduate diploma through Whitireia in 2015.
Previously Carter had a long history with creative pursuits, which also included a background in Fashion design and Screen‐printing, trained for at the Bowerman school of Design in Wellington. She has produced fashion ranges for local boutiques and also gained National fashion design awards throughout her teens and early 20’s. Carter says that her decision to turn to contemporary jewellery was a natural progression in her passion for creative expression and continuing interest in the nature of body adornment.
Diane Connal
In her work Connal uses natural and found objects such as bone, stone, jade, china and feathers alongside precious metals. “I have a love of found objects that has always run through my work. I enjoy the placement of different materials together to make up the one unique piece. Since studying at Sydney College of the Arts I have also had a love for enamelling and often use it more as yet another material rather than a process standing on its own.”
Connal has exhibited widely in New Zealand and Australia. In 2010 she had a solo show in New Space at Mahara Gallery titled ‘Cherish’- it was a thank you to those who helped her when she was ill. The Kapiti Coast has been her home for 19 years, although she lived on the coast with her family for most of her childhood. The environment and landscape greatly influence and inspire her work and she sees art forms and designs raging through the hills and over the seas.
Connal works on new ranges of work each year while still producing her past and favourite designs.
Suzette Conradie
Suzette Conradie is an Auckland based contemporary jeweller. A recent graduate from Unitec, her practice explores the relationships that exist between the maker, object and wearer. These three elements are playfully intertwined in an ongoing discussion.
Deborah Crowe
Deborah Crowe is an Auckland based artist. Crowe’s practice involves constructing environments, objects and images that investigate frameworks. Works often explore perceptions and illusions of space, systems of containing the body and/or structures of language and nomenclature.
Crowe trained in Textiles and Design at Glasgow School of Art. She has exhibited in a variety of art and design contexts and has work in collections including: Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, The Dowse Art Museum, Glasgow School of Art, The James Wallace Arts Trust and private collections in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
In 2000 The Dowse Art Museum invited Crowe to curate the 4th New Zealand Jewellery Biennale. Grammar: subjects and objects toured the large public galleries in New Zealand, bringing together objects and installation from twenty four practitioners working in contemporary jewellery and in the visual arts.
www.deborahcrowe.net
Kristin D'Agostino
Kristin lives in Auckland, makes contemporary jewellery and is a card carrying member of the Jewellers Guild of Greater Sandringham. http://kristindagostino.com/
Cath Dearsley
Cath Dearsley is an Auckland Based maker whose work is either inspired by or references animals and the great extinction of species that is occurring in our lifetime. She graduated with a Visual Arts Degree from the Manukau School of Visual Arts in 2010. Cath studied under Mary Curtis and Fran Allison along with tutoring from Renee Bevan and Ross Malcolm. She has since completed a Law Degree at Auckland University and is on a quest to speak on behalf of animals and to put right some of the wrongs she speaks about in her artist statement.
More of her work can be viewed at Masterworks Gallery, Auckland.
Sharon Fitness
Sharon Fitness is contemporary jeweller based North-West of Auckland. Sharon is a founding member of the Auckland Jewellery Geeks, documenter of the Subliminal Infiltrations project and Co-Editor of Overview with The Jewellers Guild of Greater Sandringham. She graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Auckland University at Manukau School of Visual Arts in 2007 and participated in the first Handshake Project with mentor Lisa Walker 2011-13. She was invited to be the inaugural exhibition of Zoe Brand's Personal Space Gallery and is in the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa and the Auckland Museum. Sharon is represented by Fingers, Masterworks, Avid, The National and Lure.
"I believe in saving the world, one brooch at a time"
Mandy Flood
Mandy Flood is a 2012 graduate of Unitec Contemporary Craft BA. She is a founding member of Whau Studios Collective.
Flood is represented by Fingers Jewellery Gallery.
Lisa Furno
Lisa Furno has an Advanced Diploma of Jewellery and Object Design, Design Centre Enmore from Sydney Institute of TAFE where she graduated in 2006. She also has a previous Certificate IV Art – Applied and Visual from the North Adelaide School of Art, Adelaide in 1999. She is based in Adelaide and works from the Gray Street Studios.
www.lisafurno.com
Nik Hanton
After studying Sociology and Psychology, Nik worked for a number of years in a variety of Media Industries before following her passion for jewellery. She is currently studying contemporary jewellery at Whitireia NZ.
Lisa Higgins
Lisa Higgins moved to New Zealand from the UK in 2003 and graduated with an Advanced Diploma (Jewellery) from Hungry Creek Art & Craft School in 2012. Lisa received the ‘NZ Jewellery Manufacturers Federation Award of Excellence’ in 2011, ‘Best in Show Graduate Award’ in 2012 and ‘Fingers Graduate Award’ in 2013. Lisa has shown in a number of galleries and exhibitions throughout New Zealand and Australia. She co-curated RE: (A Contemporary Jewellery Exhibition) in 2014 and is currently paired with internationally renowned sculptor Cal Lane as part of the NZ mentorship initiative Handshake2. Lisa currently lives in Auckland.
Caroline Griffin
Caroline Griffin works and lives in South Auckland. She has Bachelor of Visual Arts from Manukau School of Visual Arts (Auckland University); and was awarded the Head of School Prize in Graphics and Design. Having trained in an interdisciplinary manner she works in multiple mediums, which include sculpture, object making and wall works. She has shown collaborative works and projects at Te Tuhi, Papakura Art Gallery and her work is currently in Wunderrūma at Auckland Art Gallery.
Neke Moa
Neke Moa was born in Devonport, Auckland in 1971. She predominantly works with stone, Pounamu (NZ jade) and locally sourced materials making body adornment/ contemporary jewellery and objects for sale and exhibition. In 2000 she gained a Diploma of Design and Art at Te Waananga-o-Raukawa and then furthered her studies at Whitireia NZ, completing a Bachelor of Applied Arts in 2007.
Moa has exhibited widely, throughout Aotearoa and also internationally, as part of The Handsake Project 2010-2013 and the Wunderrūma exhibition 2014-2015. Recent exhibitions include Ko te aahua nei, an exhibition with Areta Wilkinson at The National in Christchurch. Comments an exhibition at The Gaffa gallery in Sydney, Australia, part of a series of exhibitions curated by Michelle Genders. Moa was accepted into the special exhibition Schmuck in Munich in March 2015, where she travelled as part of the CNZ funded Kiwi contingent. The exhibition will also be shown at Prague fashion week in September. This group of work has now been purchased by Te Papa Tongarewa.
Neke’s love of pounamu is expressed throughout her work. It is a material she believes represents and encompasses the qualities of being Maori and being from Aotearoa.
Shelley Norton
The general concept that underpins Shelley Norton’s work is the notion of meaning and how we construct it, and how this fascinating production in turn, defines, supports and constrains us, in our daily existence. By taking the discarded or the lesser valued, Norton seeks to create pieces that engage the viewer, to draw attention to existing knowledge, whilst at the same time being aware of new ways of looking and understanding, to liberate a degree of free association in the viewer’s conscious.
Norton’s making practice spans 20 years, and was further supported by undertaking a BVA at Auckland University in the early 2000s. She lives in central Auckland.
Sarah Read
Sarah completed a BFA in the 1980’s but somehow spent 20 years in the IT industry before kick-starting her life with Whitireia’s Bachelor of Visual Arts and Design, majoring in contemporary jewellery. In 2011-13 she participated in the Handshake mentoring project, and in 2013 co-founded Occupation: Artist, a studio/project space and critique group for like-minded jewellers. Read’s work manifests variously as performance, participatory projects (often with an element of social practice) and jewellery/objects.
As an artist, she says her finest hour so far has been seeing her work on a bus shelter in Central Wellington. She has work in the Wunderrūma exhibition currently on at Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki.
Spring Rees
In 1997 Spring Rees left behind an extensive career in film and television production to raise her girls. By the time her youngest Zephyr had started school, she was itching to return to education, and start on a fresh journey in search of creative fulfillment and to pursue a new career path. She enrolled for an Applied Arts Diploma at Whitireia in 2004 and met Peter Deckers who introduced her to the strange world of contemporary jewellery. In 2008 she completed a degree in Applied Arts majoring in Jewellery.
In the last few years Rees has been managing QUOIL Gallery in Wellington full time which has kept her very busy. She says that this break from making has also allowed her some breathing space to think about her process and direction.
Jane Ritchie
Jane Ritchie is based on the east coast of the United States where she teaches metals in the 3D department of Old Dominion University. She received her BFA in Metalsmithing and Sculpture from Old Dominion University in 2009 and her MFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2012. She has both exhibited and participated in residencies nationally and internationally.
Ritchie is also an active participant in the jewellery and contemporary art field working out of her studio in Norfolk, Virginia. Much of her work talks about value and perception through material and techniques used to execute the pieces she makes. Utilising a mixture of accepted symbols of status and preciousness with uncommon or undesirable materials, she is able to transform and elevate her mixture making her work deceptively alluring.
Tui Slater
Tui Slater Works as a conceptual artist, in both two and three-dimensional disciplines. Her materials and ideas are just as important as the final aesthetics in her work. She has a Bachelor of Applied Arts (Visual) from Northland Polytechnic Tai Tokerau Wananga and a Diploma in Jewellery Design and Construction from MIT.
tuislater.com
Nadine Smith
Nadine Smith is a Wellington based nurse and artist. She competed a Bachelor of Visual Arts and Design at Whitireia in 2009. In her creative practice she explores both self and society using a diverse range of materials and art forms.
Mia Straka
Mia Straka graduated with a Diploma in 3D Design: Jewellery from Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland in 2001. Straka’s work has featured in numerous gallery and public institutions nationally and her work can be found in the James Wallace Arts Trust Collection. Recently her practice has evolved to include large-scale sculptural work, installations and collaborations. The Talisman Project (2014), in collaboration with Roger Kelly toured, Objectspace, Auckland, Hawke’s Bay Museum Theatre Gallery, Napier and Pah Homestead, Auckland. Mia is a current member of the Workshop 6.
Frances Stachl
Frances Stachl completed her training at Whitireia Polytechnic in 1999 and is now based in Whanganui.
Caroline Thomas
Born in South East London to Kiwi parents in the 1960s, Caroline Thomas moved to Wellington, New Zealand in 2007. She came to contemporary jewellery late in life, completing a BAppA in Jewellery Design from Whitireia NZ in 2012, after having spent many years as a freelance image researcher both in the UK and New Zealand. She says: “Now I have found my 'thing', I am desperately trying to make up for all those years I have spent not making jewellery”.
Luisa Tora
Luisa Tora completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts at Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland in 2014. Tora’s work appears in group exhibitions including Between Wind and Water curated by Ema Tavola as part of Enjoy Public Art Gallery’s 2015 Summer Residency. Her work can be found in public and private collections in Aotearoa. The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa recently acquired her collaborative Dear Culture Vulture (2013) series produced with her partner, artist Molly Rangiwai-McHale.
Raewyn Walsh
Raewyn Walsh is a jeweller who works and lives in Auckland. She is a founding member of The Jewellers Guild of Greater Sandringham.
Melinda Young
Melinda Young is a contemporary jeweller based in Sydney, Australia. She has a Master of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney and has participated in over 140 exhibitions in Australia and overseas since 1997. Her work is held in public collections including the Art Gallery of South Australia and has been featured in numerous publications.
Sarah Walker-Holt
Sarah completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Auckland University at MSVA in 2010. She was the recipient of MSVA- Fingers Graduating Students Award and winner of the New Zealand Contemporary Jewellery Award in 2011. She was the only contemporary jeweller selected to represent New Zealand in Galerie Marzee’s 2012 Graduate Show: ‘Work in Progress’ in The Netherlands.
Sarah is an exhibitor in The Dowse Art Museum’s ‘Wunderrūma: New Zealand Jewellery’ now showing at Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki and is currently a mentee in the Handshake2 Prentice and Prodigy project.
Lisa Walker
Lisa Walker is an artist/jeweller/designer mostly working in the area of contemporary jewellery. She exhibits and is involved in projects with museums, galleries, and other venues around the world. She is regularly invited to teach workshops and give lectures. After many years spent living in Munich, Germany, Walker is currently based in her city of birth Wellington, New Zealand.
Vanessa Arthur is a jeweller based in the Hawke’s Bay. Her work is often influenced by daily travels; imperfect and impermanent objects, fragments and facades. In the workshop, while cutting, hammering, constructing, she picture’s her jewellery inhabiting these explored streetscapes – a drifting trove waiting to be discovered, treasured and worn.
Vanessa is currently a participant in Handshake2, a project pairing 13 emerging New Zealand jewellers with their chosen mentor. Australian jeweller David Neale is mentoring Vanessa over a two-year period.
Maca Bernal
Maca Bernal was born in Chile and is a New Zealand resident. She took her first lessons in jewellery at a very young age, she has a Bachelors Degree in fine arts and sits at the bench of a busy Parnell jewellery shop. Her work brings together her knowledge of sculpture, and volume, with her experience making and repairing fine jewellery.
Bernal is currently studying towards a contemporary jewellery diploma at Manukau Institute of Technology, Faculty of Creative Arts.
Becky Bliss
Becky Bliss graduated from Whitireia New Zealand in 2010. Her early ‘Palimpsest’ and ‘Pentimento’ series looked at traces of the past using subtle layering to evoke memories of what has been before. More recently, the ‘Penumbra’ series looks at spaces created around the shadows of simple shapes. Bliss was a participant in the Handshake1 project, exhibited in the New Zealand/Germany show Wunderrūma, and most recently was an exhibitor in Schmuck 2015 in both Munich and Prague. She is a member of Wellington-based Occupation:Artist.
Zoe Brand
Zoe Brand started her professional career selling rather expensive writing instruments and occasionally the odd pencil in her hometown of Brisbane. Needless to say this wasn’t awe inspiring stuff, so in 2005 she moved to Sydney and it was there that she found her calling, the making, wearing and viewing of contemporary art jewellery. Since then she has graduated with an Advanced Diploma in Jewellery and Object Design, worked in galleries, made some jewellery, curated shows, written words and drunk plenty of beer. Zoe is currently studying a Bachelor of Visual Arts majoring in Gold and Silversmithing at the Australian National University in Canberra.
In 2013 Zoe opened a gallery in her bedroom and online called Personal Space Project.
Maker Wearer Viewer - Blog
Nadene Carr
Carr studied at Manukau School of Visual Arts from 2004-2009 majoring in contemporary jewellery and graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts, Auckland University.
In 2009 she received the Fingers Graduation award for top contemporary jewellery student and in 2010 she was a finalist in the contemporary jewellery Regal Casting Design Awards.
Fran Carter
Fran Carter has recently completed a Bachelor of Applied Arts, majoring in contemporary jewellery at Whitireia NZ. She is now embarking on a graduate diploma through Whitireia in 2015.
Previously Carter had a long history with creative pursuits, which also included a background in Fashion design and Screen‐printing, trained for at the Bowerman school of Design in Wellington. She has produced fashion ranges for local boutiques and also gained National fashion design awards throughout her teens and early 20’s. Carter says that her decision to turn to contemporary jewellery was a natural progression in her passion for creative expression and continuing interest in the nature of body adornment.
Diane Connal
In her work Connal uses natural and found objects such as bone, stone, jade, china and feathers alongside precious metals. “I have a love of found objects that has always run through my work. I enjoy the placement of different materials together to make up the one unique piece. Since studying at Sydney College of the Arts I have also had a love for enamelling and often use it more as yet another material rather than a process standing on its own.”
Connal has exhibited widely in New Zealand and Australia. In 2010 she had a solo show in New Space at Mahara Gallery titled ‘Cherish’- it was a thank you to those who helped her when she was ill. The Kapiti Coast has been her home for 19 years, although she lived on the coast with her family for most of her childhood. The environment and landscape greatly influence and inspire her work and she sees art forms and designs raging through the hills and over the seas.
Connal works on new ranges of work each year while still producing her past and favourite designs.
Suzette Conradie
Suzette Conradie is an Auckland based contemporary jeweller. A recent graduate from Unitec, her practice explores the relationships that exist between the maker, object and wearer. These three elements are playfully intertwined in an ongoing discussion.
Deborah Crowe
Deborah Crowe is an Auckland based artist. Crowe’s practice involves constructing environments, objects and images that investigate frameworks. Works often explore perceptions and illusions of space, systems of containing the body and/or structures of language and nomenclature.
Crowe trained in Textiles and Design at Glasgow School of Art. She has exhibited in a variety of art and design contexts and has work in collections including: Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, The Dowse Art Museum, Glasgow School of Art, The James Wallace Arts Trust and private collections in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
In 2000 The Dowse Art Museum invited Crowe to curate the 4th New Zealand Jewellery Biennale. Grammar: subjects and objects toured the large public galleries in New Zealand, bringing together objects and installation from twenty four practitioners working in contemporary jewellery and in the visual arts.
www.deborahcrowe.net
Kristin D'Agostino
Kristin lives in Auckland, makes contemporary jewellery and is a card carrying member of the Jewellers Guild of Greater Sandringham. http://kristindagostino.com/
Cath Dearsley
Cath Dearsley is an Auckland Based maker whose work is either inspired by or references animals and the great extinction of species that is occurring in our lifetime. She graduated with a Visual Arts Degree from the Manukau School of Visual Arts in 2010. Cath studied under Mary Curtis and Fran Allison along with tutoring from Renee Bevan and Ross Malcolm. She has since completed a Law Degree at Auckland University and is on a quest to speak on behalf of animals and to put right some of the wrongs she speaks about in her artist statement.
More of her work can be viewed at Masterworks Gallery, Auckland.
Sharon Fitness
Sharon Fitness is contemporary jeweller based North-West of Auckland. Sharon is a founding member of the Auckland Jewellery Geeks, documenter of the Subliminal Infiltrations project and Co-Editor of Overview with The Jewellers Guild of Greater Sandringham. She graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Auckland University at Manukau School of Visual Arts in 2007 and participated in the first Handshake Project with mentor Lisa Walker 2011-13. She was invited to be the inaugural exhibition of Zoe Brand's Personal Space Gallery and is in the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa and the Auckland Museum. Sharon is represented by Fingers, Masterworks, Avid, The National and Lure.
"I believe in saving the world, one brooch at a time"
Mandy Flood
Mandy Flood is a 2012 graduate of Unitec Contemporary Craft BA. She is a founding member of Whau Studios Collective.
Flood is represented by Fingers Jewellery Gallery.
Lisa Furno
Lisa Furno has an Advanced Diploma of Jewellery and Object Design, Design Centre Enmore from Sydney Institute of TAFE where she graduated in 2006. She also has a previous Certificate IV Art – Applied and Visual from the North Adelaide School of Art, Adelaide in 1999. She is based in Adelaide and works from the Gray Street Studios.
www.lisafurno.com
Nik Hanton
After studying Sociology and Psychology, Nik worked for a number of years in a variety of Media Industries before following her passion for jewellery. She is currently studying contemporary jewellery at Whitireia NZ.
Lisa Higgins
Lisa Higgins moved to New Zealand from the UK in 2003 and graduated with an Advanced Diploma (Jewellery) from Hungry Creek Art & Craft School in 2012. Lisa received the ‘NZ Jewellery Manufacturers Federation Award of Excellence’ in 2011, ‘Best in Show Graduate Award’ in 2012 and ‘Fingers Graduate Award’ in 2013. Lisa has shown in a number of galleries and exhibitions throughout New Zealand and Australia. She co-curated RE: (A Contemporary Jewellery Exhibition) in 2014 and is currently paired with internationally renowned sculptor Cal Lane as part of the NZ mentorship initiative Handshake2. Lisa currently lives in Auckland.
Caroline Griffin
Caroline Griffin works and lives in South Auckland. She has Bachelor of Visual Arts from Manukau School of Visual Arts (Auckland University); and was awarded the Head of School Prize in Graphics and Design. Having trained in an interdisciplinary manner she works in multiple mediums, which include sculpture, object making and wall works. She has shown collaborative works and projects at Te Tuhi, Papakura Art Gallery and her work is currently in Wunderrūma at Auckland Art Gallery.
Neke Moa
Neke Moa was born in Devonport, Auckland in 1971. She predominantly works with stone, Pounamu (NZ jade) and locally sourced materials making body adornment/ contemporary jewellery and objects for sale and exhibition. In 2000 she gained a Diploma of Design and Art at Te Waananga-o-Raukawa and then furthered her studies at Whitireia NZ, completing a Bachelor of Applied Arts in 2007.
Moa has exhibited widely, throughout Aotearoa and also internationally, as part of The Handsake Project 2010-2013 and the Wunderrūma exhibition 2014-2015. Recent exhibitions include Ko te aahua nei, an exhibition with Areta Wilkinson at The National in Christchurch. Comments an exhibition at The Gaffa gallery in Sydney, Australia, part of a series of exhibitions curated by Michelle Genders. Moa was accepted into the special exhibition Schmuck in Munich in March 2015, where she travelled as part of the CNZ funded Kiwi contingent. The exhibition will also be shown at Prague fashion week in September. This group of work has now been purchased by Te Papa Tongarewa.
Neke’s love of pounamu is expressed throughout her work. It is a material she believes represents and encompasses the qualities of being Maori and being from Aotearoa.
Shelley Norton
The general concept that underpins Shelley Norton’s work is the notion of meaning and how we construct it, and how this fascinating production in turn, defines, supports and constrains us, in our daily existence. By taking the discarded or the lesser valued, Norton seeks to create pieces that engage the viewer, to draw attention to existing knowledge, whilst at the same time being aware of new ways of looking and understanding, to liberate a degree of free association in the viewer’s conscious.
Norton’s making practice spans 20 years, and was further supported by undertaking a BVA at Auckland University in the early 2000s. She lives in central Auckland.
Sarah Read
Sarah completed a BFA in the 1980’s but somehow spent 20 years in the IT industry before kick-starting her life with Whitireia’s Bachelor of Visual Arts and Design, majoring in contemporary jewellery. In 2011-13 she participated in the Handshake mentoring project, and in 2013 co-founded Occupation: Artist, a studio/project space and critique group for like-minded jewellers. Read’s work manifests variously as performance, participatory projects (often with an element of social practice) and jewellery/objects.
As an artist, she says her finest hour so far has been seeing her work on a bus shelter in Central Wellington. She has work in the Wunderrūma exhibition currently on at Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki.
Spring Rees
In 1997 Spring Rees left behind an extensive career in film and television production to raise her girls. By the time her youngest Zephyr had started school, she was itching to return to education, and start on a fresh journey in search of creative fulfillment and to pursue a new career path. She enrolled for an Applied Arts Diploma at Whitireia in 2004 and met Peter Deckers who introduced her to the strange world of contemporary jewellery. In 2008 she completed a degree in Applied Arts majoring in Jewellery.
In the last few years Rees has been managing QUOIL Gallery in Wellington full time which has kept her very busy. She says that this break from making has also allowed her some breathing space to think about her process and direction.
Jane Ritchie
Jane Ritchie is based on the east coast of the United States where she teaches metals in the 3D department of Old Dominion University. She received her BFA in Metalsmithing and Sculpture from Old Dominion University in 2009 and her MFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2012. She has both exhibited and participated in residencies nationally and internationally.
Ritchie is also an active participant in the jewellery and contemporary art field working out of her studio in Norfolk, Virginia. Much of her work talks about value and perception through material and techniques used to execute the pieces she makes. Utilising a mixture of accepted symbols of status and preciousness with uncommon or undesirable materials, she is able to transform and elevate her mixture making her work deceptively alluring.
Tui Slater
Tui Slater Works as a conceptual artist, in both two and three-dimensional disciplines. Her materials and ideas are just as important as the final aesthetics in her work. She has a Bachelor of Applied Arts (Visual) from Northland Polytechnic Tai Tokerau Wananga and a Diploma in Jewellery Design and Construction from MIT.
tuislater.com
Nadine Smith
Nadine Smith is a Wellington based nurse and artist. She competed a Bachelor of Visual Arts and Design at Whitireia in 2009. In her creative practice she explores both self and society using a diverse range of materials and art forms.
Mia Straka
Mia Straka graduated with a Diploma in 3D Design: Jewellery from Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland in 2001. Straka’s work has featured in numerous gallery and public institutions nationally and her work can be found in the James Wallace Arts Trust Collection. Recently her practice has evolved to include large-scale sculptural work, installations and collaborations. The Talisman Project (2014), in collaboration with Roger Kelly toured, Objectspace, Auckland, Hawke’s Bay Museum Theatre Gallery, Napier and Pah Homestead, Auckland. Mia is a current member of the Workshop 6.
Frances Stachl
Frances Stachl completed her training at Whitireia Polytechnic in 1999 and is now based in Whanganui.
Caroline Thomas
Born in South East London to Kiwi parents in the 1960s, Caroline Thomas moved to Wellington, New Zealand in 2007. She came to contemporary jewellery late in life, completing a BAppA in Jewellery Design from Whitireia NZ in 2012, after having spent many years as a freelance image researcher both in the UK and New Zealand. She says: “Now I have found my 'thing', I am desperately trying to make up for all those years I have spent not making jewellery”.
Luisa Tora
Luisa Tora completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts at Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland in 2014. Tora’s work appears in group exhibitions including Between Wind and Water curated by Ema Tavola as part of Enjoy Public Art Gallery’s 2015 Summer Residency. Her work can be found in public and private collections in Aotearoa. The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa recently acquired her collaborative Dear Culture Vulture (2013) series produced with her partner, artist Molly Rangiwai-McHale.
Raewyn Walsh
Raewyn Walsh is a jeweller who works and lives in Auckland. She is a founding member of The Jewellers Guild of Greater Sandringham.
Melinda Young
Melinda Young is a contemporary jeweller based in Sydney, Australia. She has a Master of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney and has participated in over 140 exhibitions in Australia and overseas since 1997. Her work is held in public collections including the Art Gallery of South Australia and has been featured in numerous publications.
Sarah Walker-Holt
Sarah completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Auckland University at MSVA in 2010. She was the recipient of MSVA- Fingers Graduating Students Award and winner of the New Zealand Contemporary Jewellery Award in 2011. She was the only contemporary jeweller selected to represent New Zealand in Galerie Marzee’s 2012 Graduate Show: ‘Work in Progress’ in The Netherlands.
Sarah is an exhibitor in The Dowse Art Museum’s ‘Wunderrūma: New Zealand Jewellery’ now showing at Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki and is currently a mentee in the Handshake2 Prentice and Prodigy project.
Lisa Walker
Lisa Walker is an artist/jeweller/designer mostly working in the area of contemporary jewellery. She exhibits and is involved in projects with museums, galleries, and other venues around the world. She is regularly invited to teach workshops and give lectures. After many years spent living in Munich, Germany, Walker is currently based in her city of birth Wellington, New Zealand.