From Barcelona to Melbourne. The National Gallery of Victori (NGV) design store in Melbourne, in collaboration with Hannah Gallery by Klimt02 is proud to present a much-anticipated collection of contemporary jewellery from Spain and Catalonia.

The selection of 24 works by 10 artists has been curated by and Hannah Gallery Barcelona and Simone LeAmon, Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture at NGV.

A curatorial work based on a selection of representative recent works by established artists and young talents. Minimalism, design, geometry, abstraction, narrativism and conceptulism shaped by silver, gemstone, plastic, wood, paint and porcelain.

Established in 2007, Hannah Gallery by Klimt02 in Barcelona is recognised as one of the leading proponents of art jewellery in the world today. Founded by Amador Bertomeu & Leo Caballero, the Gallery represents many of the world’s most provocative and influential contemporary jewellers. 
 
Curated by Hannah Gallery the NGV design store is proud to present a much anticipated collection of contemporary jewellery from Spain and Catalonia. Aesthetically and intellectually engaging the collection sheds light on how culture and craft merge to convey values of our time.


Artists statements:

Aline Berdichevsky.
IN THE WIND collection. When you go beyond artificial time, a game is allowed to come to the fore.
Imbibed by the freshness of the child I live with every day, I create globular forms. Some are discarded while others reveal a path towards that which is precious. When these forms are transformed into porcelain they become beautiful, lightweight and pure.
I search for rhythms as those transmitted by the waves and birds in flight. Memories of the origin are left with each repetition. Sometimes colors speak to me of loved ones far away and yet so close. The whole process is breathtaking and is reflected in pauses, like when two vivid gazes connect for an instance.
This collection of moments cannot be lost, one by one they are tied to each other in the wind.

Ignasi Cavaller.
I am obsessed with memories. I fear to forget who I am and where I come from, my roots. I don't want to deny the evolution of my self, but I also want to keep my origins as close as possible. I try to trigger my memories through the materials I use, looking for connections with my past and my ancestors. Asking myself if what I remember is true or is just another random creation of my subconscious. I base my work on a simple but meaningful jewelry object, the locket, creating physically useless containers to give myself the feeling that I am keeping my intangible memories in it. I am always trying to find new technics to evolve and adapt to my work, looking for reactions of the person who interacts with my pieces.

Pilar Cotter.
LAS HORAS is a study of the decorative elements of the rationalist houses of the 30’s of both capital cities of the Canary Islands, which were the geometric bands that adorned the façades called geometric knots. An homage to the craftsmen who made them and put their hands and knowledge into something that is currently unknown of how they did it. It ´s a transfer of the architectural language to the language of the jewelry, from the wall to the body.

Marian Ripoll.
I am interested in creating space. My current work BALLA is a project based on dance; a meditation on movement and a translation of the repetition of circular motion into jewellery
BALLA is modular. Simple components can be combined to create more complex shapes.As the dancers do in a choreography. The three-dimensional qualities of each piece encourage the observer to explore the pieces from different angles and when the light interacts with the wire framework new aspects emerge.

Marc Monzó.
Jewelry. The craft provides a base. It represents a starting point from where to deal with things, organize them and make a ritual out of what is occurring. Jewels are just the tool. The big project is the attempt to understand through the making of them. Pieces appear according to my most immediate needs. Which turns the manipulated matter into a map of my reality.

Estela Sàez.
The collection MYMORIES is a series of pendants based on the visual culture experienced through the past 4 years living in the Middle East. Through the photos collected during my stay I materialize the essence of this experiences across my jewellery. The pendants are made of difference sizes and completed in golden and ruthenium plated brass, a technique normally associated to the traditional “common” jewellery of that region. “Mymories” it’s a work of jewels that reflects my constant escape towards contexts and situations of an aggravated cosmopolitanism, and the way of conceiving and working those portable author jewellery concluding that big cities are the best places for loneliness. Megapolises are the loner's paradise, the eternally exiled, and I permanently search for those contexts, to literally rebuild with my work, the memories experienced abroad.

Ramon Puig Cuyàs.
The brooches and pendants from ARCHITECTURE SERIES are subtle fragments of a weightless cosmic architecture which, when taken, deposited on the our body, subtly altering the relationships and contrasts between the forms of body and surrounding space, projecting beyond their daily limits. They are structured pieces from a strict compositional syntax to approach or to give an impression of polyphony. Seeking a sound, harmonies in the relationship between the straight lines and curves, including the opposition of plans, a minimum presence of colors i material. I try to create an order which is expressed as a metaphor, as a reflection of the invisible order of the cosmos, the invisible need of relationships and symmetries that can be found in both the microcosm and the macrocosm of the matter around us. As said Juan Eduardo Cirlot in his book El espiritu de lo Abstracto, “Abstraction is dialectically opposed to the world-that-exists. It's a visibilisation of energy, in its rhythms, its ordering and constraining forms, or in their expansive forms and triggers”. In my work I try to make visible this dialectic between the ordering forms and chaos.

Edu Tarín.
THE FIBULA PROJECT is based on the origins of jewellery in our culture. How jewellery was not only decorative but meeting functionality in order to allow us to dress. Jewellery can have many different meaning, but most of us will recognize some common forms, symbols and meanings. This study is based on decontextualize the idea and the image of jewelry that was implanted in the collective memory of our cultural environment.

Xavier Monclús.
My work has changed since 2010, and this is clearly visible if we observe my practice in the twenty years that preceded this shift. The narrative that so identified my pieces is gradually receding. Whilst retaining an element of figurative reference, my line of enquiry is now focused on a more direct geometric simplicity as well as a tendency towards minimalism. Narrative compositions have been replaced by forms, that allude more to the inherent qualities of materials. I am now more interested in representing the materials that buildings are made of rather than narrating what happened inside them, as I used to do; to use geometric fragments that evoke the texture and colour of stone as well as of wood. Fragments speak of a whole; almost abstract in character, they can be in themselves a complete composition.
Animals have not disappeared from my work, not in the least. They are still there, as messengers of our own selves, except now they are turned to stone. Petrified so that their memory stays with us forever.
I am now surrounded by the vernacular and the Bronze Age, Talayotic architecture of Menorca. Menorca is where I live now and where I should like to die: a small Mediterranean island, where one is always in contact with its ancestral core.
I love this island; I chose it, I represent it.

Blanca Torà.
I have seen that a jewel can touch me deep inside or leave me indifferent, that I can feel moved or that can cause me rejection. Exactly as any other form of art. The fact of making with my hands connects me in a brutal and intense way with the material, with the ancestors, with all the humanity that has been creating for thousands of years. Seeing someone welding so accurately, to melt gold, to give texture, to scrap metal, to get dirty, fingers full of cuts. And after allthis it appears a true masterpiece. I find it completely and absolutely magical. Feeling myself capable of this sometimes it's fantastic.


The exhibition will coincide with the opening of the Melbourne Design Week, 15 to 25 March.