Mari Funaki Award for Contemporary Jewellery. Currently exhibiting at Gallery Funaki in Melbourne, CBD until 13 september is the Mari Funaki Award for Contemporary Jewellery. Mari Funaki, a world renowned contemporary jeweller and object maker, sadly passed away in 2010. This award aims to celebrate her legacy by rewarding the skills and visions of jewellers both here and overseas by providing a platform for outstanding new work to be shown here in Australia. “Mari played such an important role in contemporary jewellery, she was really an icon of the arts here in Melbourne. As well as establishing a leading gallery and maintaining a celebrated practice, her mentoring and support of emerging Australian artists in the 1990s and 2000s really helped put Australian makers on the map. I wanted to instigate an Award that encouraged recognition of her impact and keeps her name alive and present” says Gallery Director, Katie Scott. Mari was born in Matsue, Japan and arrived in Australia in 1979. Gallery Funaki was opened in 1995 after she completed studies in painting and gold and silversmithing at RIMT University. Mari was a passionate advocate for contemporary jewellery in Australia, which ultimately became the driver for opening Gallery Funaki. Her aim was to promote national and international contemporary jewellery and that she did. This award ensures Maris passion and advocacy continues with prizes awarded in both established and emerging categories. A panel of three judges determine the award recipients, who between the winners share in a total of AUD$11,000 prize money. With entries invited from artists worldwide, at any stage in their career, Gallery Funaki attracted over 530 applications from more than 35 countries for the Awards. A total of 31 finalists were chosen and are currently exhibiting at the gallery until 13 September. This year the three judges included Warwick Freeman, a respected New Zealand jeweller who has exhibited at Gallery Funaki since 1995, Simon Cottrell, a well known Australian jeweller and educator and currently acting head of the Gold and Silversmithing Workshop at ANU, Canberra, and Julie Ewington, a leading Australian art specialist with almost 40 years experience as an academic, writer and curator. The awards, supported by Vivienne and Leo Donati and Johannes Hartfuss and Fabian Jungbeck, have this year been handed to Kiko Gianocca in the established category and joint winners Patricia Domingues and Sara Gackowska for the emerging category. Swiss artists Kiko Gianocca won the established artist category with his series of three necklaces titled ‘Veneer’. Currently living and working in Lugano, Switzerland, Kiki is represented by Gallery Funaki and also has ties to Australia through completing his Master in Fine Art at RMIT Melbourne, in 2003. Since then Kiko’s work has been exhibited internationally, appearing in significant shows such as Colin & Cicely Rigg Contemporary Design Award in Melbourne, Schmuck in Munich and 2012’s Unexpected Pleasures at NGV, Melbourne and The LondonDesign Museum. The judges spoke of his winning pieces and said “They have a boldness of scale that makes them look challenging to wear, but the choice of materials and the subtlety of the construction make these pieces exceptionally successful on the body. Veneer 1, 2 and 3 are deceptively straightforward titles, but we found that the pieces evoke many different associations and interpretations. They move and shift on the body, with their beautiful hinging adapting to the wearer. This is exceptional work.” Patricia Domingues, successful with her pendant from the ‘Duality’ series in the emerging artist category was born in Portugal in 1986. Patricia has worked in the area of jewellery since she was 15 years old after attending a course “Art and Metals” at António Arroio School in Lisbon. Since then she has continued to travel and hone her craft, in turn successfully winning awards around the world. The judges said “her work Duality plays with oppositions between chance and deliberation - if you look at the piece, you’ll see that it seems highly structured - its a frame of artificial ivory, but she has embraced the possibilities of chance in fracturing that form.” Alongside Patricia and her pendant ‘Duality’, Sara Gackowska was also awarded in the emerging artists category for her brooch titled ‘Membrane’ from the ‘Methamorphosis’ series. Completing her masters in 2013, Sara is an artist from Poland who has exhibited in group exhibitions throughout Europe, America, Canada and Asia. Her work is held in the International Collection of Contemporary Jewellery Art, The Gallery of Art in Legnica, Poland and the Amber Museum in Gdańsk, Poland. Judges commented “we greatly admired the elegant oppositions between the two main materials - dense hematite on the top surface, and spongy bio-resin on the base. There’s a wonderful necessary relationship between the two materials and the way the top surface appears broken, and fractured, precisely because of their interaction. Commendations also went to Jiro Kamata in the established category and Inari Kiuru for the emerging category. In reflection of the current exhibition and Awards, Gallery Director, Katie Scott says ‘There are few awards open to emerging contemporary jewellers, in particular. The emerging category of the Mari Funaki Award was established in response to this. We want to encourage the work of promising younger artists, presenting alongside more established artists’ work. This kind of context is an important opportunity for younger artists - and I think people will be impressed at the quality of this emerging work. It certainly holds its own”. For more information on these Awards including the full list of exhibitors, Gallery Funaki or Mari Funaki, visit the gallery’s website galleryfunaki.au/gf/.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 04:48:38 +0000
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