Beverly Price
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WORK 1 – Six Photographs: SYMBIOSIS FOR A PUPA NECKPIECE : The Camera, the Jeweller and the Jewel. Medium: Installation – A row of 6 Photographs (90 X 60 cm) , + 1 Jewel in perspex case. The photos were taken by Des Tak, ± 60MB Jewel materials: holographic postcard, metallic cotton, perspex, sausage paper from the Czech Republic, fine gold, Swarovski Crystals, silver, copper, Japanese Chenille, rusted wire, Czech glass beads Statement about the work: The neckpiece is a reference to the tradition of cameos in jewellery and the tradition of hallmarking to reveal the identity of the maker.Here I am present. The metamorphosis of Jewellery art interests me as it appropriates its art context from Photography because the latter brings macro-life and even intentionality to jewellery objects. The question for me often is which is the art – the photo or the jewel . My presence adds a performative aspect. Is the focus me, the jewel, the photograph? The cameo is exaggerated which is to challenge the timidity of little cameos. Different on each side and constructed to turn as the wearer walks. It is a piece to wear consciously because of the size and ergonomics. The changing views are captured in the 4 photographs. The sausage paper is a little abject – skin like and translucent. The shape of the holding section mirrors the cameo formatively.
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Mapungubwe re-Mined –
This work is 500g fine gold and 18 carat. The images hater than the jewel, have been used in exhibitions including Global Africa Project (MAD New York) , and Unexpected Pleasures ( Melbourne NGV, and Design Museum London) – rather than the object itself.
It raises the interface of Fashion, Expressive photography, Jewellery. Which takes precedence?
For me it is an overall expression of boldness of an adornment object from Africa, and for me here , South Africa, referencing the precolonial authority of those goldsmiths, over Western beliefs for African ‘need’ to be colonised.
I surrender to the fact without shame, that jewellers depend on photography for the focus and still-attention, that the Image brings to our jewellery objects. More so than sculpture, which images serve more to report and record, than to express an inherent part aspect of the artwork – which
Jewellery is parasitic, if not symbiotic, with Photogrpahy .
CV
Jewellery artist and sculptor. Work on themes related to acknowledging precolonial Mapungubwe goldsmiths and hybridity of South African indigenous adornment objects with traditional western jewellery forms and practices.
Exhibit with jewellery artists out of SA including Museum of Arts and Design ( 2013 – recent acquisitions) 2014 – the place of photography in jewellery; Global Africa Project – 2010-11.
Design Museum London : Exhibition called “Unexpected Pleasures – the art of contemporary jeewellery.
My work is published in many books most recently Jewelbook published by Kunst Stichting in Belgium
One solo exhibition at Standard Bank Gallery in 2007
Have not sold out to contemporary jewellery, but persist as a jewellery artist.
Writing and making and showing.
I wrote the chapter on contemporary Jewellery in South Africain the Mapungubwe commemorative book published by Pretoria University.
Remain interested in the integrated relationship and the great challenge of curating jewellery art conceptually and to NOT look like “retail”. Very challenging internationally this matter.
Studied speech therapy , then jewellery in Jerusalem then at SIr John Cass, London, then post grad Advanced Diploma in Fine Art at Wits with distinction.
Made a Mapungubwe rhinoceros for Paul harris’s collection at Ellerman House contemporary
Most recently ResearchAssociate at VIAD at UJ.