A wonderful energy, a wonderful artist, a wonderful human being – sadly missed!
Marcus
Published on April 23, 2014
Interview filmed on the occasion of the solo exhibition Space and Gravity by Mari Funaki at Klimt02 Gallery in Barcelona in February 2008. The artist talks about her work, the process of work: drawing, breaking predictability, her gallery and steel and black concept.
Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973)
ice objects
2011
Enamel, copper, reflector beads
Various dimensions
“Confronted by the immensity and power of desert and ice, one cannot simply stand to the side and evaluate as though one were standing before a landscape garden and other works of art. Conflicting emotions, including fear, are aroused and simultaneously absorbed or taken over by the overmastering presence of nature.”
.
Yi Fu Tuan. Desert and Ice: Ambivalent Aesthetics, 1993
There are many things to like about this exhibition: the fine craftsmanship, the forms, the observation and the beauty of some of the pieces. The symbolism is simple and effective – re-imaged relics of white, vitreous enamel objects from the huts of Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton, the use of reflector beads to imitate snow and Meccano-like steel girders to symbolise human construction and encroachment on a pristine land.
Some of the ‘objects’ remind me of the beauty and simplicity of Etruscan vessels, seemingly delicate apports, being the transference of an article from one place and time to another; the use of reflector beads at the bottom of ice sample (2011, below) is also inspired. So too is the occlusion of the image in the brooch ice plane (2011, below) which adds further mystery to an already surreal landscape. One piece is absolutely stunning. The wonderful neckpiece ice movement (2011, see two photographs below) is ravishing in it’s articulation and form, its snow-covered twig-like coolness.
Unfortunately where the exhibition fails is in the use of banal images in several works such as ice depot, ice runway, ice industry (brooch, all 2011, not pictured) and ice industry (2011, neckpiece, below). The obvious point being made is that of man made construction in a pristine landscape but the simple symbology used so effectively in other pieces becomes a little awkward in these pieces. The images used are quite ugly and while this fits the symbolic use of them it doesn’t make for very interesting or illuminating art. There needed to be more layering for the message to be effective – which is why the occluded brooch works so well, human construction blinded, dissolved.
This is a pity because the rest of the exhibition is excellent. Enter this ice world and you will be delightfully surprised!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
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Many thankx to Katie Scott for her help and Gallery Funaki for allowing me to publish the photographs and text in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973)
ice edge (left)
Object
2011, enamel, reflector beads, copper, silver
60 x 350 x 210 mm
ice sheet flow (right)
Object
2011
Enamel, reflector beads, copper, silver
70 x 130 x 195 mm
Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973)
ice plane
Brooch
2011
Enamel, photo transfer, reflector beads, silver, copper, steel
80 x 80 x 10 mm
Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973)
ice industry
neckpiece
2011
enamel, copper, photo transfer, paint, silver
280 x 160 x 10 mm
I make jewellery and objects that both connect to and explore human experience and place. Since Antarctica’s discovery explorers, expeditioners, artists and writers have attempted to record and visualise this isolated continent. In 2004 I was awarded a New Zealand Antarctic Arts Fellowship en joined those who communicate their experiences of Antarctica.
Antarctica is often regarded as a pristine yet harsh environment, home to extraordinary wildlife and the domain of scientists. Due to its remoteness projects that are supported by international Antarctic programmes are predominantly science-based and as a result artistic research in Antarctica is limited. The cultural theorist, Yi Fu Tuan describes the experience of the explorer as: “the longing to be taken out of oneself and ones habitual world into something vast, overpowering and indifferent.” His statement resonates with my experience of Antarctica where I found myself drawn to the minutiae of the ice crystal and the structures and forms that I could associate with in the extraordinary landscape. While in that place, so removed from the conventions of civilisation, I came to understand the immensity of nature and to see that it exists without the necessity for human presence …
Inside the historic huts of Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton I was captivated by the history, contained both in the interior spaces themselves and in the material artefacts left by the expeditioners … These seemingly mundane objects are transformed into a still life of significant artefacts of a previous time, preserving the memory and story of their parties of explorers.
My interpretations engage through the iconography of personal jewellery, domestic objects and the environment of Antarctica. In the course of making I continue to investigate and portray Antarctica through my own and others’ personal experiences. The objects I produce reference valued souvenir jewellery and objects now displayed in museums as historical artefacts, which were once personal mementos …
Excerpts from the catalogue text by Kirsten Haydon May 2011
Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973)
ice movement
Neckpiece
2011
Enamel, copper, reflector beads, silver
Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973)
ice sample
Object
2011
Enamel, copper, reflector beads
Gallery Funaki
This gallery has now closed.
Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Object
2008
Heat-coloured mild steel
20.0 x 28.0 x 5.0cm
Collection of Raphy Star, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki
Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Container
2008
heat-coloured mild steel
(a–c) 21.3 x 40.5 x 8.5cm (overall)
Private collection, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki
Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Container
2008
heat-coloured mild steel
4.8 x 16.0 x 15.5cm
Private Collection, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki
Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Object
2008
heat-coloured mild steel
20.0 x 28.0 x 5.0cm
Collection of Raphy Star, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki
Let us drop away all interpretation and look at the thing in itself.
The literal feeling of standing before these objects.
Form
Balance
Colour
Surface
Precision
Will
Style
Silence
Quiet, precise works. Forms of insect-like legs and proboscises. They balance, seeming to almost teeter on the edge – but the objects are incredibly grounded at the same time. As you walk into the darkened gallery and observe these creatures you feel this pull – lightness and weight. Fantastic!
The surfaces, sublime matt grey colour and precision of their manufacture add to this sense of the ineffable. These are not mere renderings of content, but expressions of things that cannot be said.
Sontag observes, “Art is the objectifying of the will in a thing or performance, and the provoking or arousing of the will … Style is the principle of decision in a work of art, the signature of the artist’s will.”1
Sontag insightfully notes, “The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, its silences.”2
And so it came to pass in silence, for these works are still, quiet and have a quality of the presence of the inexpressible.
Funaki achieves these incredible silences through being true to her self and her style through an expression of her endearing will.
While Mari may no longer be amongst us as expressions of her will the silences of these objects will be forever with us.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Sontag, Susan. “On Style,” in Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Delta Book, 1966, pp. 31-32.
2/ Ibid., p. 36.
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Many thanxk to Alison Murray, Jemma Altmeier and The National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All individual photographs of work by Jeremy Dillon.
Mari Funaki: Objects installation shots on opening night at NGV Australia
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan
Opening 6 August, the National Gallery of Victoria will present Mari Funaki: Objects, an exhibition showcasing a range of sculptural objects by the renowned contemporary jeweller and metalsmith, Mari Funaki (1950-2010).
This exhibition will present a selection of Funaki’s distinctive objects, dating from the late 1990s to 2010 including four recent large scale sculptures. The artist was working on the exhibition right up until the time of her recent death.
Jane Devery, Acting Curator, Contemporary Art, NGV said: “It was a great privilege to work with Mari Funaki on this exhibition. She possessed a clarity of vision and a capacity for ongoing invention that is rare among artists. Funaki produced some of the most captivating works in the field of contemporary jewellery and metalwork. Her unique geometric objects, meticulously constructed from blackened mild-steel, stemmed from a desire to express the world around her.”
“Funaki was interested in the expressive and associative capacities of her objects, creating forms that might stir our imaginations or trigger something from our memories. It has been particularly thrilling to see her extend these concerns in large scale works,” said Ms Devery. In 1979 Funaki left her home in Japan for Melbourne where she pursued her creative ambitions, enrolling in Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT in the late 1980s. At RMIT she studied under the prominent jewellers Marian Hosking, Robert Baines and Carlier Makigawa.
In 1995, Mari Funaki established Gallery Funaki in Melbourne’s CBD which remains Australia’s most important space dedicated to contemporary jewellery. Throughout her career she exhibited widely within Australia and overseas and won many awards, twice winning the prestigious Herbert Hoffman prize in Munich. In 2007 she was awarded an Australian Council Emeritus Award for her work as an artist and for her success in promoting Australian and international contemporary jewellery.
Frances Lindsay, Deputy Director, NGV said: “The NGV is delighted to exhibit many never-before-seen works by such an innovative and celebrated Melbourne artist. The exquisite objects assembled in this exhibition allow us to appreciate Mari Funaki’s remarkable artistic achievements.”
Mari Funaki: Objects will be on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Federation Square from 6 August to 24 October, 2010. The exhibition will be open from 10am-5pm. Closed Mondays. Entry is free.
Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria website
Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Object
2008
Heat-coloured mild steel
36.0 x 47.5 x 14.5cm
Collection of Johannes Hartfuss & Fabian Jungbeck, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki
Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Container
2006
Heat-coloured mild steel
26.0 x 8.5 x 6.0cm
Collection of Peter and Jennifer McMahon, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki
Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Object
2010
Heat-coloured mild steel
30.0 x 19.0 x 20.5cm
Collection of the Estate of Mari Funaki, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki
Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Object
2010
heat-coloured mild steel
45.0 x 52.0 3.5cm
Collection of the Estate of Mari Funaki, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki
Mari Funaki (born Japan 1950, arrived Australia 1979, died 2010)
Object
2010
heat-coloured mild steel
12.0 x 44.0 x 14.0cm
Collection of the Estate of Mari Funaki, Melbourne
© The Estate of Mari Funaki
The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia
Federation Square
Corner of Russell and
Flinders Streets, Melbourne
Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm
David Neale (Australian, b. 1977)
Brooch
Steel, paint, marble, lapis lazuli
2009-2010
A nice double act of an exhibition at Gallery Funaki that showcases the jewellery of David Neale and first time exhibitor Emma Price. Neale’s delicate folded and layered brooches of bud and leaf-life forms sparkle with crushed marble, turquoise and lapis lazuli forming a palette of pale blues, pinks, greens and vibrant hints of red, the shapes almost a form of metal collage. As pieces of art they work excellently but as jewellery they seem fragile perhaps due to the thinness of the metal used and what I perceived as a lack of structural integrity. As brooches I wonder how carefully one would have to wear them (very carefully I suspect) and how long the crushed sparkling rock would adhere to the surface of the metal (I have since been reliably informed by Simon that they are very sturdy but this was an initial reaction on picking up the brooches).
Of more significance are the articulated trapezoid necklaces by Emma Price. These are stunning architectural works (at very reasonable prices!) that are made of gold, silver, brass and copper. They exude a quietness and balance that is beautiful and a playfulness (because of the interlinked forms that actually move) that is delightful. In these geometric forms there seems to be a suspension in/of reality as if the world is hanging by a thread. A bright future awaits for this artist.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
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Many thankx to Katie Scott and Gallery Funaki for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
David Neale (Australian, b. 1977)
Brooch
Steel, paint, marble, lapis lazuli
2009-2010
David Neale (Australian, b. 1977)
Brooch
Steel, paint, marble, lapis lazuli
2009-2010
Highly respected Melbourne jeweller David Neale presents new pieces alongside Emma Price, who will be showing her first significant group of work at Gallery Funaki in this exhibition.
David Neale’s intriguing folded forms, borne of his sensitive treatment of metal sheeting using texture and paint, have earned him a significant reputation both in Australia and overseas. His recent work shows a shift away from botanical influences, towards more abstract and expressive forms. There is a bold sense of the painterly in these works, as Neale’s powdery, textured colours become a dominant focus.
Emma Price completed her Masters of Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT in 2005 before spending a year at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts in 2008. Her finely balanced structures are constructed from painstakingly drawn down tubing in gold, brass, silver and copper. The shifting, architectonic forms of her neckpieces seem to dance against the body.
Text from the Gallery Funaki website [Online] Cited 26/08/2010 no longer available online
Emma Price (Australian, b. 1975)
Necklace 2
silver, brass, gold
2010
Emma Price (Australian, b. 1975)
Necklace 6
silver, brass, copper, gold
2010
Emma Price (Australian, b. 1975)
Necklace 8
silver
2010
Gallery Funaki
This gallery has now closed.
It is with great sadness that I hear of the passing of Mari Funaki on the 13th May 2010.
I met Mari many times and she was always wonderfully generous with her energy, knowledge and enthusiasm. She was an amazing artist, I loved her work especially the stunning anamorphic black bracelets and the fact that she used photography of Bernd and Hiller Becher as part of her inspiration. My conversation with Mari in 2006 and photographs of her work can be found on the Notes from a Conversation with Mari Funaki posting.
Vale Mari Funaki
“A memorial will be held on Tuesday June 1st, 2010 at 11.00am in THE GREAT HALL of the National Gallery of Victoria, International.
Please RSVP to Katie Scott at galleryfunaki@iinet.net.au or phone 9662 9446 if you wish to attend (affirmative responses only please). Everybody is welcome to celebrate the life of this extraordinary artist, gallery director and friend.”
Mari Funaki outside Gallery Funaki
Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974)
Untitled (touch wood) multiples
2009
Burnt wood, resin
Photo: Marcus Bunyan
A beautiful exhibition of objects by Swiss/Italian artist Kiko Gianocca at Gallery Funaki, Melbourne, one full of delicate resonances and remembrances.
Obelisk pendants in blackened and silvered wood, Neolithic standing stones, totemic, silent;
The hole through the object akin to ‘seeing’ through time.
Exposed wood on base (touch wood) as grounding.
The standing stone installation an altar piece, a dark reliquary (see image above)
Glass vessels with internal funnels filled with the gold detritus of disassembled objects, found pendants:
Horse, Anchor, Four leaf clover, Swan, Hammer & sickle (see images below)
The distance between the bail – the finding that attaches the pendant to the necklace – and the remainder/reminder of the vessel itself. What a distance!
As Sally Mann would articulate, ‘What remains’1 …
Lives previous to this incarnation; jewels embedded in dust.
The captured potency of displaced objects.
Personal and yet anonymous at one and the same time.
Brooches of gloss and matt black resin plates. A plastic black, almost Rembrandt-esque.
On the reverse images exposed like a photographic plate, found images solidified in resin.
The front: the depths of the universe, navigating the dazzling darkness
The back: memories, forgotten, then remade, worn like a secret against the beating chest. Only the wearer knows!
Here is a territorialization, “a double movement, where something accumulates meanings (re-territorialization), but does so co-extensively with a de-territorialization where the same thing is disinvested of meanings.”2
As Kiki Gianocca asks, “I am not sure if I grasp the memories that sometimes come to mind.
I start to think they hold me instead of me holding them.”
Time is the distance between objects. No objects.
Space is the distance between events. No events.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
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Many thankx to Katie and Gallery Funaki for allowing me to take the photographs in the gallery and post them online. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © Marcus Bunyan except The waterfall.
“I own a stone that a friend passed to me, and a shackle that Michael gave me.
I found a curious object in Lisbon at the fleamarket, I paid one euro for it and I still don’t know what it is.
Yesterday I had a look again at the picture you shot. I am not sure if I grasp the memories that sometimes come to mind.
I start to think they hold me instead of me holding them.”
.
Kiko Gianocca, April 2010
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974)
Untitled (touch wood) multiples
2009
Wood, silver
Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974)
Horse, Anchor, Four leaf clover and Swan (left to right)
2009
18k gold, glass
Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974)
Horse
2009
18k gold, glass
Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974)
Anchor
2009
18k gold, glass
Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974)
Swan
2009
18k gold, glass
Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of exhibition with Untitled (touch wood) burnt wood multiples in distance
Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974)
Man & dog
2009
Found image, resin, silver
Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974)
The waterfall
2009
Found image, resin, silver
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974)
The dog
2009
Found image, resin, silver
Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974)
The kiss (reverse)
2009
Found image, resin, silver
Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974)
The way up (reverse)
2009
Found image, resin, silver
Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974)
The beast (reverse)
2009
Found image, resin, silver
Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gallery Funaki
This gallery has now closed.
Carlier Makigawa (Australian, b. 1952)
Brooch
2009
Silver, paint
Jewellery as art; is art
Brooches, objects
Robust/delicate
Holistic body of work
Affirmation of line and form
Simplicity/complexity of shapes
Span ______ (meta)physical
[Interior] exterior!
elemental | articulation
Volume ((( ))) form
&
arch-itecture
SPACE
√
beauty
……………………….
Dr Marcus Bunyan
.
Many thankx to Gallery Funaki for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Carlier Makigawa (Australian, b. 1952)
Brooch
2009
Silver
Carlier Makigawa (Australian, b. 1952)
Brooch
2009
Silver
Carlier Makigawa (Australian, b. 1952)
Brooch
2009
Silver
“A spiritual and private space. Ritual object, jewellery. Linear structures appear fragile and monumental to cradle the internal spirit. They appear to float in space, hovering, penetrating, a temporary existence. Nature is the reference, and the geometry of nature and architecture inform this world.”
.
Carlier Makigawa
Carlier Makigawa explores the parameters of small spaces in her new exhibition October 2009. Her spare, exacting constructions in silver wire have a monumentality that defies their scale and delicacy. Her new work consists of brooches and objects which move beyond the botanical inspiration of her earlier work to engage with more abstract notions of movement, compression and spatial manipulation.
Text from the Gallery Funaki website [Online] Cited 01/05/2019 no longer available online
Carlier Makigawa (Australian, b. 1952)
Object
2009
Silver
Carlier Makigawa (Australian, b. 1952)
Object
2009
Silver
Carlier Makigawa (Australian, b. 1952)
Brooch
2009
Silver
Carlier Makigawa (Australian, b. 1952)
Neckpiece
2009
Silver
Gallery Funaki
This gallery has now closed.
Mari Funaki (Australian, 1950-2010)
Bracelet 1 from Space between
2005-2006
Heat-coloured mild steel
Mari Funaki (Australian, 1950-2010)
Bracelet 2 from Space between
2005-2006
Heat-coloured mild steel
Mari Funaki is one of Australia’s leading jewellers. This exhibition celebrates her considerable achievements between 1992 and the present day. Her first major show in a state gallery, it includes nearly fifty works and will be the first time Perth audiences have seen her work in such depth. Many of these are new works produced especially for this show.
The exhibition will focus on rings, containers and bracelets. These forms have been the core of her practice, the foundation of her intricate material experimentations. Her sheer intensity of focus has seen her hone these forms into objects of extreme power and beauty. Funaki’s is no simple beauty, however. It is sharp, complicated. There is always a sense of danger in her work, as the spindly legs of her insect-like containers support unlikely, unwieldy torsos, and as her rings and bracelets cultivate miniature monoliths that play with scale and weight in fascinating ways.
This exhibition will frame these unique objects in such a way as to acknowledge Funaki’s ability to work with space and matter to form entrancing works that adorn the imagination in the same they adorn the body.
Text from the Art Gallery of Western Australia website [Online] Cited 10/08/2009 no longer available online
Mari Funaki (Australian, 1950-2010)
Bracelet 3 from Space between
2005-2006
Heat-coloured mild steel
Mari Funaki (Australian, 1950-2010)
Bracelet 4 from Space between
2005-2006
Heat-coloured mild steel
Mari Funaki’s initial response comes from the environment – the response is part random, part constructed idea.
Funaki likes the ‘animated’ response from the viewer – allowing them to make their own associations with the work and their own meaning. The making of the work doesn’t emerge out of nothing but through the development of ideas over a long period of time.
Mari starts with a flat drawing – this approach comes from an Eastern perspective in the history of art making i.e. screens, woodcuts and scrolls. Initially when starting with the idea Mari is mentally thinking in two dimensions – then drawing out onto paper in two dimensions the ideas.
When actually making the work Mari then starts working and thinking in three dimensions – starting with a base piece of metal and working physically and intuitively around the object, to form a construction that evidences her feelings about what she wants to create. She likes the aesthetic beauty but uneasy aspect of a dead insect for example (like the Louise Bourgeois Maman spider outside the Guggenheim in Bilbao).
Now collaborating with architect Nonda Kotsalidis, Mari is working to produce her sculptural objects on a larger scale, up to 6 metres high. She needs the objects to have an emotional and physical impact on the viewer – both beautiful and threatening at one and the same time. How will her objects translate to a larger scale? Very well I think.
Funaki likes the physical distortion of space – and she likes telling a story to the viewer. She is working on a building where the facade is really strongly geometric and then she is embedding an emotion into the front of the building – constructing a narrative – constructing an emotional response with the viewer and establishing a relationship with the building. Here she is working from photographs of the space, her own recognition and remembrance of that space. She is having to work physically in 3D from the beginning for the first time, but still uses drawings to sketch out her ideas.
Several of Funaki’s pieces in the Cecily and Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award (2006) at the NGV Federation Square were inspired by the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Their photographs of factories and gasworks, specifically the facades of such buildings (see image below), were the jumping off point for the development of the objects (the bracelets). Funaki takes the front of these buildings, a 3D structure ‘in reality’ but pictorially imaged on a 2D plane, and then twists and distorts their structure back into a 3D environment. The facades move up and around, as though a body is twisting around its own axis, pirouetting around an invisible central spine.
Each piece is created and then the next one is created in relation to the previous, or to each other. Each individual piece has its own character and relation to each other. They are never variations of the same piece with small differences – each is a separate but fully (in)formed entity.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Bernd and Hiller Becher (German, 1931-2007 and 1934-2015)
Water Towers
1980
Gelatin silver prints
“Black. Sharp, shifting contours. Familiar and alien. Confident, expressive and agile, it is easy to take the existence of these works for granted – and it is hard enough to trace in one’s mind the physical evolution back through heat colouring, sandblasting, soldering, assembling and cutting, to unremarkable, thin sheets of mild steel – let alone comprehend their conception and resolution.
They inhabit space in a way that is difficult to describe – the edge between each object and the space that encloses it is shockingly sudden.
How can something human-made be so insanely artificial and natural at the same time? It must be no accident that I described them as articulate – ambiguous and wide ranging in the breadth of associations and allusions, they can tell you everything and nothing at the same time.”
Sally Marsland, 2006
Text from the Gallery Funaki website [Online] Cited 10/08/2009 no longer available online
Mari Funaki (Australian, 1950-2010)
Bracelet 5 from Space between
2005-2006
Heat-coloured mild steel
Mari Funaki (Australian, 1950-2010)
Bracelet 6 from Space between
2005-2006
Heat-coloured mild steel
Art Gallery of Western Australia
Perth Cultural Centre
Perth WA 6000
Opening hours:
Wednesday – Monday 10am – 5pm
Closed Tuesdays.
Opening: Tuesday 13th January 2009
“I never work with the intention to decorate things or to make them look prettier. I try to discover the soul of an object or the essence of a photograph – I want to shape something new which appeals to me and to other people far beyond the optical appearance.”
Bettina Speckner
Bettina Speckner opening crowd at Gallery Funaki, Melbourne
A very social crowd was in attendance for the opening of an exhibition by German jeweller Bettina Speckner at Gallery Funaki in Melbourne. The jewellery was certainly ravishingly made: refined, beautiful and with an elegance to most of the pieces. Interspersed between the jewellery were colour photographs of about A4 size that featured empty chairs, red benches, huts in the landscape and plants. These photographs seemed to have a very loose association to the form and imagery of the jewellery and were very minor photographs. I was not sure of their actual relevance to the pieces themselves.
Speckner uses a lot of imagery in her jewellery – tintype portraits from the Victorian era, grey etched images of gardens and vases studded with jewels and crystalline forms that have an almost solarised graphite feel to them and flowers, statues, pillars and cows etched into enamel. In these sites of intervention she seeks to make new worlds – inner/outer worlds that e-merge out of the material / worlds that are present and have ‘presence’.
The best work combines enamel, intaglio, jewels and photographic processes together. The art transcends the materials of each and coalesces in objects that transport the viewer – forming other associations, new insights into the condition of the object.
As the artist sees, this is not so much about the memories, cultural significance and semiotics embedded in the photograph but about making something new. For me this is where the problems lies.
Is it inevitable that there is a history and association present with these images or is the viewer culturally able to see them as new objects – in a postmodern sense?
It is almost as though Speckner does want these associations present between the jewellery and the images, why else put the colour photographs between the jewellery – or is this another example of her dissociative technique coming into play. Speckner seems to have purchased the memory of the object (which it still holds) but then wants to completely overwrite it – is this possible?
Personally I don’t think this is fully possible. While no ‘grand narrative’ is present in some of these images (some images seem to be so removed from their context that we will never be able to place them again) in other pieces the images overpower the art. The ‘trace’ of memory and identity, an entity for a split second before a camera, their unique state in this singular tintype, their actual presence and life not so easily destroyed!
When an artist seeks to justify work without fully understanding the cultural implications of the use of such images, even saying she seeks to find the soul of an object when the soul may already exist in another form, then in my eyes the work is unresolved, the vision uneven. Despite the beauty of the art, its refinement and great craftmanship, there is something lacking at the heart of these works – perhaps a deeper understanding that the soul can reside in optical appearance, that less may be more and that transcendence is more than skin deep.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Gallery Funaki
This gallery has now closed
Opening: Tuesday 11th November 2008
Helen Britton (Australian, b. 1966)
2008
Moving through Melbourne’s busy laneways from the Oleh Witer exhibition we arrive at the intimate, stylish Gallery Funaki to view the work of Australian artist Helen Britton who works with the form of contemporary jewellery. The crowd spilled onto the street and the small space was busy with an interesting crowd in attendance.
The exhibition presents brooches, earrings, rings and necklaces built with the artists trademark assemblages. Whilst the necklaces are more prosaic (movie like reels and slinks of melted plastic restrained within metal banding) it is the brooches that capture and hold the viewer’s attention. Sci-fi like grided circles collide with concave discs filled with glistening blue crystals; thrusters and steel from a miniature collapsed lunar landing vehicle vie with clusters of vibrant colours that appear to be imbedded into a lunar landscape: delicate crimped and folded metal landscapes with the appearance of collapsed geometric origami.
These are wonderfully inventive constructions, invigorating for their energy and exuberance. Britton has described her work as “industrial baroque”. Perhaps an equally pertinent description would be spatial, or ‘space baroque’ as the artist investigates the nexus, the cellular biology of matter, reality and the spaces we inhabit.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Helen Britton (Australian, b. 1966)
2008
Gallery Funaki
This gallery has now closed
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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