This exhibition will be formally opened on 31 October 2024 | Thursday 6pm | Entry to this opening is free | Bookings Essential
The Robert Foster Metal Prize exhibition showcases outstanding contemporary metal work highlighting how imagination, high-quality making skills, good design and innovation can regenerate how we see and interact with the world around us. The Robert Foster Metal Prize encourages and rewards excellence in these field and showcases the work of 15 finalists from across Australia.
The Robert Foster Metal Prize exhibition is supported by the Tall Foundation, F!nk + Co Director Gretel Harrison, and Craft + Design Canberra and honours the legacy of Robert Foster and the significant contribution he made to Australian design.
Festival Opening Hours | 1 – 10 November | Daily 10am – 6pm
Post Festival Opening Hours | 13 November – 14 December | Wednesday to Saturday 12pm – 4pm
Entry to the exhibition is free | No bookings required
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Beth Sanderson (she/her) is a Melbourne/Naarm based artist and contemporary jeweller. Her practice examines everyday and mundane objects with the aim of finding poetry in moments often overlooked. Beth holds an Advanced Diploma in Jewellery and Object Design from Melbourne Polytechnic and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at RMIT in 2023. She was a finalist in Fresh! 2023 at Craft Victoria and received the Student Award for Contemporary Wearables 23 with Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery and was a finalist in Talente Masters of the Future Munich Jewellery Week 2024.
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Bic Tieu is a designer, object maker, and jeweller. She is also a lecturer teaching in the School of Art and Design at the University of NSW. She is interested in ways objects are holders to stories, cultures, and knowledge.
Bic’s practice draws on traditional and contemporary craft and design methods inspired by her Asian-cultural lineages to investigate themes of personal and cross-cultural narratives. Specialising in traditional and contemporary metal and lacquer craft technologies, her practice often utilises a synthesis of these materials to create new perspectives on contemporary object-making and meanings. Her recent work navigates cartographic ways to explore the ‘in-between’ to create new kinds of cultural objects that are representative of the hybrid cultures, diasporic life experiences, and identity represented in the diverse cultures in Australia. Bic’s practice revels in materiality expressed in object-based forms to create a better understanding of cultural diversity within the Asia-Australia context.
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David Walker graduated from art school in Manchester, UK, a school with a distinct Bauhaus ethos, majoring in silversmithing with a minor in ceramics. With the idea of becoming an industrial designer he was awarded a postgraduate scholarship to study industrial design. Seeking an industrial design position after postgraduate studies he was offered a post as a lecturer in design in Perth, WA. He accepted, beginning a longstanding career in Australian tertiary education culminating in a professorship at Curtin University, WA.
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Jenny Johnstone is an artist who makes jewellery and objects and is interested in the Australian landscape and all it has to offer — its ever-changing palette, the plants that inhabit it, its stories, and its interrelationship with humans over time. Jenny has a background in architecture and trained in jewellery design and manufacture at Design Centre Enmore, Sydney, before moving to Adelaide to undertake an associateship at JamFactory (Jewellery and Metal Studio), where she is currently based.
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Born in the city of Seoul, Korea, and in 1996, Son and his family moved to Sydney, Australia.
In 2010, Son graduated from his undergraduate (with Honours) studies at the Sydney College of Arts, majoring in Jewellery & Object, further going on to complete his Masters in Design, in 2013, majoring in Object & Accessories, at the University of Technology, Sydney. Following his return from Shanghai, in 2018 Son was granted a year long residency at the Gold & Silversmithing Studio, Australian National University, ACT. In 2022, Son was awarded the 2nd overall prize for his work '925 Heptadecagonal Shuki & Shuhaidai' in the prestigious Itami Crafts Award for the Itami Museum of Crafts, Japan. Son is currently based in Sydney, where he bases his practice and teaching.
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Kirsten Haydon investigates the potential of gold and silversmithing to communicate human experience and connections with the environment. Kirsten completed a PhD in 2009 and has been teaching at the School of Fine Art, RMIT University in Melbourne since 2002. Kirsten travelled to Antarctica as a New Zealand Antarctic Arts Fellow in 2004. Her art practice, crafts and explores connections and observations of the environment through concepts of historic photography and micromosaics. Site and archival studies inform works which aim to engage the act of remembering and the fragile futures of ice by assembling and drawing on metal and enamel surfaces.
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Larah Nott is a Jewellery and Object maker based in Mollymook, NSW, Australia. After travelling Australia and Europe as a chef and studying jewellery design and manufacture in London and at Melbourne Polytechnic, she moved to Canberra in 2012. Larah graduated from The Australian National University in 2014 with a Bachelor of Design Art, Gold and Silver smithing. She has exhibited in Australia, Taiwan, Japan, USA, France, Germany, Greece, Spain and Thailand with work in public and private collections. She is also the winner of National and International Prizes for object making and is represented by Bilk Gallery, Canberra.
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Lindy McSwan’s creative practice developed through the study of gold and silversmithing. A finalist in Craft Victoria Fresh! 2012 graduate show, Lindy won the Sofitel on Collins Award. An Australia Council for the Arts ArtStart Grant in 2015, assisted her in establishing her studio practice. Lindy's work has been exhibited, collected and awarded nationally and internationally.
Lindy will present new work in a solo exhibition titled Re.surfacing at Shopfront 342, Fitzroy North, Melbourne, in September, as part of the 2024 Radiant Pavilion program.
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Marian Hosking (Victoria) is an educator, jeweller and silversmith. With the benefit of intensive practice she has developed a personal vocabulary in her work to express a specific vision and interpretation of the qualities of Australian light and landscape in the detail of botanical specimens. She uses the drill and jeweller's saw together with lost wax castings and favours the soft white sheen of silver, with its evasive highlights and shifting shadows.
She has held 16 solo exhibitions in Australia, one in Seoul (2006) and one in Tokyo (2000). She has participated in over 60 group exhibitions in Australia, Europe, the United States, Korea Japan and Asia. Her work is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, all State Galleries in Australia, the Hiko Mizuno College of Jewelery collection, Tokyo and Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen, Scotland. An active member of jewellery and craft organizations Marian is committed to the promotion of and dialogue around contemporary jewellery and contemporary art practice.
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Nicholas Burridge draws upon practice-based research to unpack the complex relationship between industrialization and nature. His work unpacks the term ‘Terraforming’ focusing attention upon the ways that humans are re-engineering the earth and our current geologic epoch the Anthropocene. Many of Burridge’s projects are site specific with multiple experimental outcomes, this has led to him having research residencies at Melbournes Living Museum of the West, Canberra Glassworks, The Quarry and Jacks Magazine a heritage munitions warehouse. In all these instances the aim has been to reveal latent narratives and metaphors that are embedded in materials.
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Dr Oliver Smith began his tertiary studies in the Jewellery & Object Studio at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney and completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 1995. This was followed by a period of work experience, modelled on the traditional journeymanship, that saw him work for prominent silversmiths and metalworkers in Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Germany, and England. Returning to formal study in the Gold & Silversmithing Workshop at the School of Art, The Australian National University, Oliver gained First Class Honours in 2000, and a Master of Philosophy in 2003. Since that time Oliver has maintained an active research profile as an artist and has presented his work through exhibition nationally and internationally. From 2005 Oliver has worked as an academic at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney and in 2021 was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy.
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The incorporation of technology and light has been an undercurrent theme in Sean Booth’s artistic exploration for many years. Sean’s creative direction often looks to push skills into new terrain with an attraction to engineering, manual and CNC machining and modern manufacturing processes. Balancing this machine-based approach is a strong knowledge and application of traditional hammer forming techniques.
Sean has been represented in national and international exhibitions and has works in national institutions and private collections. His practice has continued to evolve and grow with experiences in private commissions, limited run production, assisting in design development and resolution, fabrication and installation of large public art works as well as the passing on of knowledge via teaching. Sean strives to balance the desire to create challenging and complicated works against the knowledge that simplicity is not easy to achieve.
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Sean O'Connell is a jeweller, artist and metalworker, currently living and working in subalpine Tasmania, in Luggermairrernerpairrer country. He studied Gold and Silversmithing at Australian National University, and completed his PhD at Sydney College of the Arts and Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.
He has exhibited here and abroad, and won prizes in Australia and internationally, such as winning Contemporary Wearables in Toowoomba, and the Itami Prize at the Itami International Craft Exhibition in Japan. His work is included in public collections such as the National Gallery of Australia and the South Australian Art Gallery. His work has been shown in several touring exhibitions such as Jam Factory's Steel, and was included in the inaugural NGV Triennial.
Sean's practice is split into two complementary halves - the laborious crafting of handmade metalwork, and, experimental photography and sound that explores the movement of energy through matter. Through these two practices he seeks to work with, and better understand, the matter that makes up our world.
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Wayne Guest’s skill as an artist place him as one of Australia’s most respected silversmiths. With over 20 years of studio practice, he wields his hammer with deft and considered control. Experience and passion made him a highly valued lecturer having mentored students for the last two decades.
Represented in numerous Private and Public collections including the National Gallery Canberra, Guest has exhibited widely within Australia and overseas.
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Ximena Briceño’s core practice lies in the history of art, cultural iconography and its nexus with trade, including craft, fine arts, jewellery and precious metal work developed in diverse cultures and nations.
Based in Canberra since 2004, she established her studio ‘Ximena Joyas’. She was awarded a PhD in Visual Arts in the Gold and Silversmithing workshop at the Australian National University’s School of Art in Canberra in 2011. She continues to make, research and to collaborate with other artisans producing small batch series of objects works creating a transpacific connection. Her current works explore diverse materials, the power of iconography (ancient and modern) and meaning of colour.
Join us for an artists talk with Ximena, Oliver and David in the gallery 2 November | Saturday 3pm | Entry to the talk is free | Bookings Essential
Proudly supported by the Tall Foundation and
Image credit: Gretal Ferguson | Out of Frame, 2022 | Photograph by Tim Bean