Past Pop-up Kristina Neumann pop-up exhibition

In Australia, millennials experience anxieties with respect to housing when leaving the family home. Kristina Neumann’s pieces engage with themes that respond to the experience of the ‘home’ for Australian millennials. The investigation is explored through the field of contemporary jewellery, an appropriate vehicle due to its qualities of emotiveness, portability and familiarity. This practice-led research establishes a visual language through experiments with materials and forms taken from her past and present homes.

Explorations of materiality, using soft and hard surfaces, provide a sense of internal and external spaces. Architectural references used as motifs, reminiscent of security and stability, elicit an emotional response from the viewer. Recognisable form and materiality strongly communicate themes of ‘home’. A talisman for her generation is created when her jewellery references architectural details, recognisable forms and materiality. The architectural and material aspects of the work can be interpreted directly or indirectly, allowing for subjective interpretations.

Kristina Neumann is an emerging artist & designer/maker from Canberra. Her work has been recognised through a number of awards and prizes, including the Talente 2020: International Craft Exhibition Prize, at the Handwerkskammer in Munich, Germany; the Toowoomba Regional Gallery Contemporary Wearables Emerging Artist Prize and the CAPO Robert Foster Memorial Award. She graduated from the ANU School of Art Jewellery & Object Workshop with first class honours in 2019.

Curated by Lucy Chetcuti

Arts ACT Homefront Funding is a proud supporter of this most recent body of work by Kristina Neumann.

Image: Kristina Neumann, Wall, 2018, Canberra red brick, polymer clay, 925 silver, cord, 5.5 x 3.5 x 2.8. Photo by Brenton McGeachie.