MAKESHIFT

…a collaborative project with Raewyn Walsh

What happens when a workshop is shared by craftspeople who wish to work in collaboration, attempting to reconnect with the jewellery wearer while maintaining their individuality?  In UNITEC Alumni, Raewyn Walsh and Kristin D’Agostino’s experience, their ideas, materials and processes have crossed over at times and they have seen similarities appear in their work.  However, they have managed to maintain their individual practices so as not to encroach on each other’s jewellery ‘territory’.

Raeywn and Kristin have extended their collaborative endeavours into an experimental project that goes beyond the traditional view of craft as a display of virtuosity, to assert jewellery as a practice that actively connects with its audience/ wearer.  They have used the collaboration to take their work to a new place, where shared artistic concepts, materials, and processes are privileged, extending their individual practices at the same time.  In doing so, they wish to lift the restrictions they have previously imposed on themselves, both real and imagined.

To this end they have found three stimuli objects (a tyre inner tube, a loop of wire and a wooden square with a circle cut out) that remind them of jewellery.  They have responded to form, material, and colour creating a body of work that have extended their own making methodologies and which will feed back into their individual practices.

This work was originally shown at Snowwhite, Unitec 2012.

To celebrate the start of Auckland Artweek 26 Oct – 4 Nov, Masterworks Gallery are having a special pop-up show from Friday 26 – Sunday 28 Oct. Raewyn Walsh and Kristin D’Agostino exhibited makeShift in the THINKspace. This work was developed during a collaborative residency at Unitec during 2012.