As part of the Artists Alliance Graduate Series, MIT Jeweller Macarena Bernal reviewed the 2016 MIT Jewellery Graduate Show, Made to Wear.
This December, Royal Jewellery Studio in Kingsland was home to this young jewellery exhibition for the 3rd consecutive time, showing work by 5 students recently graduated from different levels of their jewellery studies at MIT.
The MIT workshop opens up a world of jewellery making possibilities for its students, allowing them to experiment with a large variety of techniques, and facilitating the young jewellers to find their personal voice in the current jewellery scene.
For some, this is their first outing – a nerve wrecking event for which they’ve worked fiercely for months. For others, it’s an invitation to celebrate with friends and family what they have achieved.
In the center cabinets, graduating from level 5, Diploma in Jewellery:
Julia Marin (Neckpiece photographed by Macarena Bernal)
Julia Marin; cleanly manufactured geometrical shapes, enhanced with some precious stones, in the form of earrings, rings, and a large neckpiece. Julia has worked with recycled silver, perhaps wanting the wearers to be aware of this, touching the subject of ecological awareness reutilizing her once discarded metals.
(Julia Marin, Ring photographed by Macarena Bernal)
Nitti, (Parneet Kapur) inspired by nature, has experimented with enamelling copper and forge forming silver, her delicate nasturtium leafs seem to float on an organic shaped neckpiece and ring.
Antoinette Botha’s cut patterns in silver are clean and airy. She shows an array of textures in them but it’s when she stacks them that they gain in strength and movement.
Antoinette Botha (Earrings, rings, necklace photographed by Macarena Bernal)
Huyen Nguyen is a clever designer, her line earrings proved quite popular at the opening. A somewhat uneven pair of blackened silver wire constructions that activated people’s curiosity, and several other line structures in the form of rings and a brooch that move, shift, change and invite play.
Huyen Nguyen (Ring pieces photographed by Macarena Bernal)
Last but not least, the only level 6, Advanced Diploma student present at the show, Lesina Salani, with her magical winged bunnies. Delicately wax modeled, and then cast in silver at the MIT workshop, these creatures belong to an ethereal world of wonders. Wearing them as a necklace, brooch or even a two-finger ring, is entering Lesina’s mystical imagination.
Lesina Salani (Neckpiece photographed by Macarena Bernal)
Selected pieces from the show will be in stock at Royal for all of December, so don’t hesitate to visit and get your Xmas jewellery fix.
By Macarena Bernal
BVA UFT, Advanced Diploma in jewellery practice MIT
www.macab.co.nz
https://www.facebook.com/macabjewellery/
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