Handshake7 at Gallery Marzee

The Exhibition

Climbing up the industrial iron staircase to our final Handshake7 exhibition on the second floor of Gallery Marzee in the Netherlands, I am greeted by a narrow gallery with twelve rectangular tables. Standing to attention in a linear row, they are reminiscent of the trains I’ve snaked my way here on.

Theatrical illumination throws graphic shadows along the polished concrete floor spotlighting the work. Each table holds the jewellery of one Handshake artist. It’s the first time I’ve seen everyone’s work completed and displayed together as a group. I find an exciting exhibition of beautifully cohesive and resolved works by twelve makers with their own self assured style and content. The work is polished without losing the traits of spontaneity and experimental play that the Handshake project champions.

Visitor and collector Sara Visbeek comments there is a special quality present in jewellery from Aotearoa, the work carries the feeling of nature being big, wild and close up in our lives. Even when using industrial waste materials there remains a sense of this connection to the natural world and its processes.

As a Handshake participant I was privileged to witness the early sparks of ideas, material explorations and forms becoming manifest during a five month series of online masterclasses led by jeweller and educator Estela Saez Vilanova. These early months were a flurry of explorative output during which we were divested of preconceived notions about what we might produce and taken to new zones of realisation, learning and discovery.

The experience draws parallels with aspects of traveling, or adapting to changing circumstances and environment. Saez’s insistent motivating energy threw quick-fire tasks and challenges at us, directing just enough to land us in unfamiliar terrain, from which we’d need to sink or swim. This strategy pushed our parameters and encouraged free experimentation. I’m pleased to see we all swam, not without a few sinking moments behind the scenes but that indicates we were willing to enter the unknown and push ourselves further in our work; exactly the purpose of the Handshake project. The final works are considerately rendered, fully formed incarnations of this process.

The Work

Being fortunate to view the exhibition in person, unifying themes emerge. These include; a sense of lightness, play and wonder, reconnection and mending, regenerating discarded, repurposed and/or ecologically kind materials, an ethos of transformation, the marking of time, place and presence,

Kristin D’Agostino’s curvy plains in the series of monochrome works titled ‘Haphazard Joy’ extend the intuitive making of the masterclass series. Nadene Carr’s colourful enameled bendings in repurposed industrial copper tube evoke a joyful spontaneity, supported when off the body by sculptural ‘home base’ structures. ‘Play Time’ by Becky Bliss explores colour, forms and gender in anthropomorphic figures inspired by the work of Friedrick Froebel, the founder of the kindergarten system.

Kristin D’Agostino

Nadene Carr

Becky Bliss

Mandy Flood’s carefully embroidered stitches contrast on the burnt contours of their grey mesh landscapes in provocatively titled works such as ‘The Right to Repair’. An old leather saddle and her late Mother’s broken seed pearl necklace become the hero materials of Caroline Thomas’s work. Thomas brings meaningful historic objects into the present narrative, offering new life and a future to these reconfigured materials. Similarly Aphra Cheeseman gleans decaying or old materials and objects to make afresh, skilfully replicating often uncelebrated industrial techniques by hand, drawing attention to the everyday interactive relationship between people and things.

Mandy Flood

Caroline Thomas

Aphra Cheeseman

Minimalist forms and a reductive palette embody the calm graceful curves of Lisa Higgin’s explorations in liquid rubber, inviting interpretation and a sensual experience of the work. The unknown or undefined area of liminal space is also investigated within the strong pastel shapes of Nina van Duijnhoven’s scored and folded paper works. Their ephemeral aesthetic juxtaposes unexpectedly with the solidity of the layered construction. In ‘Pollinator mix’ Raewyn Walsh combines beeswax collected from her backyard hives with tree roisin and essential oils in a collection of softly curved pendants. Repetitive mark marking on the pastel surfaces accentuates the vessel like forms, signifying the artist’s presence. Their gentle scent offers another layer of sensory engagement to the wearer.

Lisa Higgins

Nina van Duijnhoven

Raewyn Walsh

Strong graphic pendants abstract black and white statements, ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘Maybe’ in Nik Hanton’s 3D printed plant filament pendants. The specially created typeface takes the rhetoric into the visual language of semiotics, questioning these reductionist notions at the heart of human communication, to be worn front and centre.

Nik Hanton

Simon Swale

Mia Straka

Simon Swale subverts map making as an inadequate representation of physical space in his tribute to Berlin based mentor Gabi Schilling. Place shapes with cutouts referencing public spaces are layered with skewed printed topological maps. Swale creates imaginary spaces in an extension of his interest in our experience of urban spaces. My work (Mia Straka) marks a day both real and imagined across a survey of friends and colleagues. Shapes in the series titled ‘The pursuit of efficiency will drain your life of meaning’ are based on radar charts of a recorded 24 hour period in each participant’s life, one average day and one imagined ideal day. Sections of foraged bamboo coloured with natural pigment represent space/time made physical and wearable. The work questions what we value and asks us to consider how moments build a life.

In Summary

‘Handshake7 – 12 New Zealand Jewellers’ invites contemplation and offers a window to contemporary jewellery happening in the South Pacific within the four story, architecturally renovated gallery spaces. It is an honour and opportunity to exhibit at Gallery Marzee, internationally renowned for representing and supporting the contemporary jewellery movement from early pioneers of the art form to recent graduates since 1979.

Three established jewellery artists from Marzee; Iris Bodemer, Annelies Planteydt and Katherine Dettar each coached four Handshake participants in online feedback sessions during the last few months of preparation. These sessions supported us in resolving final work and provided the space to answer specific questions around the exhibition process at Marzee. Work by these artists balustrades our exhibition in a semi circular display of tables heading our row of 12.

Coaching exhibition

Katherina Dettar

Sara Visbeek and gallery staff

During the opening I was able to act as ambassador for Handshake7, sharing further context of our work, individual practices and the Handshake project with gallery director Marie-José van den Hout, her family and staff, academics, practitioners and collectors including Liesbeth den Besten and husband Jim, Jeroen Redel and Sara Visbeek and Annelies Planteydt, who all attended the opening. This instigated genuine relationships between us and strengthened ties between the contemporary jewellery community in Aotearoa and The Netherlands. On a personal level I was privileged to view the Marzee collection and be shown the private collections of both Den Besten and Redel in Amsterdam, viewing world class contemporary jewellery and gaining insight into how important collections are built by individuals, while retaining jewellery’s function as wearable adornment of personal significance interacting with the world.

A huge thanks from all of us in Handshake7 to Peter Deckers and Hilda Gascard for their ongoing work which feeds the contemporary jewellery sector in Aotearoa and beyond. This work is vital to support our growth and development as makers creating important work at an intentional level and strengthening our relationships with an intentional network of curators, practitioners, academics, collectors and wearers. The support of Creative New Zealand helps to make this project possible and is so important at this challenging time when opportunity for supported higher level learning is increasingly tenuous in our field.

Thanks to Marie-José van den Hout, Niki, Michiel and Bridgette Heffels plus Marzee gallery staff, Jeroen Redel and Sara Visbeek, Liesbeth den Besten and husband Jim, and Annelies Planteydt who all made the opening a wonderful and welcoming place to connect and present the work of 2022 Handshake7 artists including:

Aphra Cheesman