Exhibition – Earrings – 5th-24th October

Come and join us tomorrow evening (5th October) for a drink as we celebrate this fabulous new exhibition.

Society girls

The opening of V n X: Filigree to Flora made it into the Canberra Times Social Pages last week! As you may be able to tell, we are pretty thrilled about it. There were quite a few guests featured, including the artists themselves.

Ximena Briceno and Vicky Mason, The Canberra Times, Wednesday August 31

Make sure you come along and see Filigree to Flora before it finishes; the works are selling fast!

Filigree to Flora – Pieces of the Week

Pieces from Ximena and Vicki in the current exhibition, Filigree to Flora. On display until September 24.

The work of these two artists is technically very different, yet they are both inspired by the details of nature.

Vicki Mason, The Entangled Garden, 2011. Brooches: powder coated brass and sterling silver, hand-dyed PVC, polyester thread, cotton interfacing

For Vicki Mason this is the native flora of Australia, the motifs and decorative shapes inspired by these plants and rendered in unexpected materials including PVC and cotton.

Ximena Briceno, Bay of Fires III, 201i. Brooch: titanium filigree laser welded

Ximena looks to the undulating forms of the landscape and the fauna of Australia for her inspiration. These views are then reproduced using ancient filigree patterning with modern materials and techniques, resulting in the highly intricate and painstakingly produced laser welded titanium filigree.

V n X Filigree to Flora – works by Vicki Mason & Ximena Briceno

VnX Filigree to Flora – works by Vicki Mason & Ximena Briceno

An inspiring collection of works formed by artists Vicki Mason and Ximena Briceno through traditional and contemporary techniques to express feelings of identity, origin and migration.

Vicky Mason’s pieces combine three different strands of research, from the decorative motifs of Australian colonial jewellery, to the chinoiserie motifs used on ironstone china and local endemic plants from south-east Melbourne.

Vicky continues to be enthralled by plants as a subject matter and stories they tell about our lives and the societies. Her pieces are a way of embracing the decorative nature of plant forms of Australia and their imported origins to tell a personal story. This story speaks to ideas associated with migration, complexity, abundance, diversity, identity, hybridity and belonging through a vocabulary of ornamental plant forms.

Ximena Briceño tells another story, one that looks to explore the historical practice of filigree and the use of 21st century technologies.

Her pieces challenge our concept of filigree as she creates three-dimensional drawings using non-traditional materials such as titanium, monel, and silver. Ximena’s silver filigree objects and jewellery have a layered complex history involving trade, migration, and a visual vocabulary of patterns.

Her titanium filigree is  contemporary filigree for the 21st century, through the application of new materials like titanium, and processes like laser welding and anodising, to create the pieces.  The filigree works are ‘metal lace-like’ three-dimensional drawings.’