The Precious Materials Exhibition

A group exhibition featuring contemporary jewellery and objects curated by Zoe Brand who also curated Feast.

I'll be showing three of my 100% hand-stitched pieces - The MonoWing, The Empress Dowager's New Bib and The Empress Dowager's New Toy along with fantabulous pieces by:

Erin Field
Rae Harvey
Bea Chew
Frejj (Jayne and Julia Flanagan)
Phoebe Miller
Sharon Margaret
Joao Vaz

I saw their work yesterday when I dropped mine of at the gallery and I wanted nearly everything that I saw - very beautiful and totally wearable! You would too!

So if you're in the area tomorrow, please pop by for a cheeky drinkie-poo or two at the opening between 6pm and 8pm. Hope to see you there!

Precious Materials - A group exhibition featuring contemporary jewellery & objects
From Thursday 25 March to Tuesday 6 April 2010

The Keeper Gallery at Gaffa
281 Clarence Street (behind the Queen Victoria Building)
Sydney
Phone: (02) 9283 4273
Website: www.gaffa.com.au
Opening Hours: Mondays to Fridays from 11.00am to 6.00pm, Saturdays 11.00am to 5.00pm

The Empress Dowager's New Toy

#111. Another piece for the Precious Materials exhibition.

And it's a brooch! Not a necklace.

Again, like with the first piece for the show, I thought I should use motifs that was originally from the MonoWing that I made last year.

Hence the hand-embroidered Peacock and the Cloud...

...the silver beadwork and the same haberdashery trims for the Kite's tails.

The Cloud is another brooch in itself - you can wear it on its own.

If you're wearing it with the Kite, you can insert as many tails as you like through a loop on the back. And you can move the Cloud around for more "tail hang" or less.

Why make a brooch and not another necklace for the exhibition, you might wonder.

Well, I thought I should revisit some of my old work - I used to make these fabric Kites two years ago and have kind of forgotten about them until...

Image from Fred Butler

...I saw this on the amazing Fred Butler's blog late last year!

I am a big fan of her work so if it's good enough for Fred, I thought, then it's good enough for me. Time to bring the Kites back!

I don't know if I'll make another one so if you like it, it's up for sale at the Precious Materials exhibition. And after in the blog-shop if it's not sold.

Precious Materials - A group exhibition featuring contemporary jewellery & objects
From Thursday 25 March to Tuesday 6 April 2010
The Keeper Gallery at Gaffa
281 Clarence Street (behind the Queen Victoria Building)
Sydney
Phone: (02) 9283 4273
Website: www.gaffa.com.au
Opening Hours: Mondays to Fridays from 11.00am to 6.00pm, Saturdays 11.00am to 5.00pm

The Empress Dowager's New Bib

#110. Made for the Precious Materials exhibition.

Been wanting to incorporate embroidery into the New Jewels and I've finally done it. Woo!

The Diving Carp & Waves motif is originally from the MonoWing made last year. I thought since I'm showing the MonoWing at Precious Materials too, I should repeat the motif so there's a link between the pieces besides the embroidery work.

But I will not repeat the design again because no two pieces of The Empress Dowager's New Jewels can ever look the same, remember?

If you'd like to own this one-off piece, The Empress Dowager's New Bib is for sale at the exhibition. And after in the blog-shop if not one buys it.

Precious Materials - A group exhibition featuring contemporary jewellery & objects
From Thursday 25 March to Tuesday 6 April 2010
The Keeper Gallery at Gaffa
281 Clarence Street (behind the Queen Victoria Building)
Sydney
Phone: (02) 9283 4273
Website: http://www.gaffa.com.au/
Opening Hours: Mondays to Fridays from 11.00am to 6.00pm, Saturdays 11.00am to 5.00pm

From The Wardrobe Of Iris Apfel + Christopher Kane's A/W 2010 Collection

Hello all, it's been a while, hasn't it?! Have just been madly embroidering, beading and assembling the Precious Materials exhibition pieces since the last post. But it's all done now! Dropped them off at the gallery today. Woo!

Before I put up the pieces here, I'd like to show you some pretty images of embroidered things - some very old, some fresh of the catwalks at the recent Fashion Weeks.

Let's begin with the vintage numbers from one of my favourite books Rare Bird Of Fashion - The Irreverent Iris Apfel. A constant source of inspiration for me!

When I was making the MonoWing, my first embroidered piece, last year, Iris Apfel's massive collection of embroidered and embellished things, amongst all her vintage (like real vintage) couture pieces, featured heavily on my mood boards.

When Zoe Brand, the curator for the upcoming exhibition Precious Materials, first invited me to show, I couldn't decide if I should put the MonoWing in because we are required to submit three pieces and it would mean that I'll have to make two more embroidered pieces just so there's some form of a link between them. As much as I love to embroider, the thought of making two new pieces from scratch worried me. The amount of time required! Oh!

Then, a couple of months later, Zoe sent out formal written invitations-for-entries in which she quoted Iris Apfel, "...I look at a piece of fabric and listen to the threads. It tells me a story. It sings me a song." Not knowing that I was a big big fan. Oh, what I'd give to own just a tiny part of Iris Apfel's amazing wardrobe!

And the treasures from her home...

Anyway, I saw that quote as a sign to start making two more embroidered pieces for Zoe's show. Haha.

Now, on to the spanking new pieces from designer Christopher Kane's latest collection...

Images from here

Embroidery on shiny leather!

I love that he's applied a traditional craft in a modern context - my brief-to-self when I made the MonoWing at the height of the Balmain-shoulder-mania which might have been unconsciously inspired by the way Iris Apfel puts her clothes together.

This is what Harold Hoda, Curator of The Costume Institute at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, had to say about the way she dresses:

"Mrs Apfel's combining of, say, a Lanvin haute couture "burnoose" with silver jewelry from the American Southwest is so estranged from authenticity that it exists as a poetic and gleeful evocation of an exotic other that is a completely imaginary construction.

While much of the power of Orientalism in fashion resides in its ability to introduce erotic and fantastical narratives, this form of exoticism has also been characterized by anachronistic conflations and the introduction of Western elements to non-Western dress.

But despite the submerged meanings and the false readings inherent in such citation, there exists in its endorsement a proclamation of the value of indigeneous dress over the inherently self-obsolescent cycle of Western fashion.

It is in this way that Mrs Apfel explores the seductive associations of regional dress and the vanishing beauty of its artisanal forms."

I'd like to see more designers incorporate non-Western elements into Western-style dress, like Christopher Kane has done. I'm hoping we'll see a big resurgence of the use of artisanal-type skills in fashion following his amazing collection.