Melbourne Now is an exciting new exhibition showcasing the work of over 200 contemporary artists and designers from across Victoria. Bold in scale, Melbourne Now will be displayed throughout all levels of The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, including permanent collection galleries, showcasing new works and commissions by emerging, mid-career and senior practitioners as well as local collectives. From fashion and jewellery, painting, sculpture, architecture and ceramics, to video, performance, printmaking and publishing.
24 MAR–20 AUG 2023
FREE ENTRY
THE IAN POTTER CENTRE: NGV AUSTRALIA, FED SQUARE
The inaugural 2013 exhibition was an unprecedented survey of some of the most exciting local contemporary practitioners. Ten years on, Melbourne Now 2023 will again highlight the latest art, architecture, design, and cultural practice shaping Melbourne.
Laura has also been personally invited to speak on a panel regarding Jewellery Now for the opening weekend of Melbourne Now. Click here for details.
“Jewellery Now provides insight into Melbourne’s dynamic culture of contemporary jewellery practice through the work of fifteen artists and designers. Representative of diverse backgrounds and approaches to jewellery, the practices celebrated in the exhibition reflect a wide variety of material and making traditions, including unexpected approaches that challenge conventional thinking about what constitutes jewellery and its significance today.
Defined by its relationship with the body, jewellery communicates on cultural, social, personal and political levels. As an outward statement to the world, jewellery has always been an important form of material production for conveying messages about the relationships between people and the things they value. These messages are not always overtly articulated, but conveyed subliminally through material, technique, imagery, scale and location on the body.
Foregrounding the skill and conceptual prowess of the artists and designers in Jewellery Now, the sixty new and recent works on display highlight how different materials and forms in jewellery can act as markers of cultural identity and belonging to place. Works include silver neck chains cast from snake vertebrae tied to Country; carved neckpieces depicting endangered Australian fauna made from the timber handles of garden shovels; as well as one-of-a-kind brooches, rings and hairpieces. The works in the exhibition reveal embedded histories and the present-day realities of people, places and materials, allowing us to better understand the implications of jewellery design in Melbourne.”
Simone LeAmon, The Hugh Williamson Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture, NGV
The Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Art
Laura was a shortlisted finalist with 39 other Australian artists for the The Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Art.
This prize is awarded every two years and is open to emerging and established artists working in any medium across Australia.
The finalists exhibition was held at the Barn Gallery, Montsalvat from 7th May-1st July 2021. @nillumbikarts
CULTURAL AFFAIRS – Art without Borders
Laura was invited to exhibit work from her latest series, ‘Mygration’ at the latest exhibition at Grassi Museum of Applied Arts, Leipzig.
This exhibition was curated by Silvia Gaetti and takes a deep look at artists whose work also deals with issues of cultural affairs.
‘Exchange between cultures has always had an impact on their arts, their crafts, and their design. Just as people travel and migrate, objects adapt to new environments and contexts. This is reflected in their design: along with works of art, their forms, types of ornamentation, and techniques were and are subject to a transformation that arises from the experience of travel and migration.
CULTURAL AFFAIRS presents as “traveling objects” mainly jeweller , fashion and textile as well as graphic and industrial design by contemporary young designers and artists. These are characterized by an often global or transcultural origin and biography.
Exhibited here are global networks and interpretations of techniques and objects, as well as their developments, aesthetics, and messages that have changed through travel. In this time of cultural pluralism and heterogeneity, the focus on the present as well as the future underlines that collaborative, international, and intercultural projects are becoming ever more significant. The examples in the exhibition make it clear that, just as in our increasingly networked world today, the art and design of recent centuries would be inconceivable without transcultural encounters.’
Click here for more information regarding the exhibition.
Pearls, Press, Confusion & Mygration
March 2020
Solo exhibition held at Gallery Wittenbrink, Munich.
Curator, Brigitte Jucitis:
‘The show ‘PEARLS, PRESS, CONFUSION, MYGRATION’ exhibits an overview of Australian jeweller Laura Deakin, with the main focus on her new series ‘Mygration’.
Laura Deakin enjoys working on specific series, which focus intensively on a specific theme. She often plays with concepts of assumed and expected function, while juxtaposing modern and classic materials, such as pearls with resin or sterling silver with watercolour paint.
One series entitled ‘My Press’ refers to our daily consumption of print media. Tiles of polyester resin make up each necklace using the extracted print from one single day, each telling a unique story. By pressing each image from the daily newspaper into polyester resin, Deakin preserves our moments.
Her new work, ‘Mygration’, asks questions about what it means to leave a familiar place and move to a foreign one, and what it is like be a minority or why our memories of home flavour our experience of a new place. This body of work explores notions behind human migration and the connections we all have to it. Here Deakin again uses the necklace as a canvas to exhibit wonderful surreal landscapes.’
Spotbeam
The Spotbeam exhibition took place during Munich’s Jewellery Week in 2017 and was a opportunity for fellow contemporary jeweller, Melanie Isverding, and myself to show our work alongside one another for the first time.
Melanie and I met during our post-grad studies at the Munich’s Academy of Fine Art. Our work is very different, however we have often worked on projects together and both have a shared aesthetic which lead us to believe that exhibiting our work side-by-side would make an interesting juxtapose. Within our practice our choice of materials, our approach and our intentions are vastly different, however despite this, our work continues to find a common ground and this exhibition showcased these finely shared threads.
The exhibition space at ARTikle3 was the perfect local for our desired set-up. A large, low table with reflective PVC sheeting. This simple material was the perfect canvas to set our work on. With Melanie’s work on one side, and mine on the other, the viewer could see each piece clearly and draw the finer comparisons between the two.
The exhibition was a huge success and lead to a coming exhibition at Gallery Loupe opening on October 5th 2019.
CONGLOMERATE
An exhibition of new jewellery alongside drawings from each artist.
Doris Betz
Laura Deakin
Mielle Harvey
Henriette Schuster.
Open on 12th, 13th & 15th March 2015, from 10am – 5pm
The Young Ones
This exhibition featured new jewellery by a group of emerging artist hand picked by Gallery Ra. This gallery prides itself on supporting new talent and recent graduates. This exhibition showed the work of Laura Deakin as well as five other artists:</p><p>Anja Eichler, Jasmin Matzakow, Jie Sun, Silvia Weidenbach and Zindzi Wijminga.
Seams Seems, Monash University & Rhode Island School of Design
Seams, Seems is an exhibition bringing together alumni from Monash Art Design & Architecture (MADA) and Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), presenting a diverse selection of jewellery and objects that sometimes challenges and often delights.
My press Exhibition, USA
Gallery Loupe is pleased to announce My Press, the latest body of work by Australian contemporary jeweler Laura Deakin. With an archaeologist’s quest for clarity, Deakin strings beads of polyester resin (into which newspaper pigment has been pressed) to create necklaces that she regards as “diaries” – each possessing a universal message, with titles such as “Taken on Saturday,” “Our Fabric,” and “Our Headlines.” Seeking to express the preservation of daily struggles, challenging environment, and personal stories against the inevitability of life’s fleeting nature, Deakin views this series as haptic storage vehicles. She yearns to catalogue our memories, so as not to lose them to the ravages of time. In her own words: “How do I preserve our everyday struggle, our environment and our stories? How can I keep our moments forever against the consequences of time? How do I make the fleeting permanent? Press it, feel it, remember it – slices of our time preserved in my press.” My Press and selected objects from Deakin’s other series can be seen at Gallery Loupe beginning Saturday, November 9 through December 8. An artist’s reception will be held on Sunday, November 10 from 2-4 p.m. She will be speaking at Brooklyn Metal Works, Brooklyn, New York on Saturday, November 9 at 3 p.m. Gallery Loupe represents the work of innovative contemporary studio artists. Focusing on established and emerging artists from the U.S. and abroad, the gallery offers the opportunity to see and experience the most experimental and provocative jewelry being created today. It presents an expansive view of what jewelry can be through the use of non-traditional materials and challenging approaches. Gallery Loupe’s program of exhibitions and artist conversations offers the chance to explore and understand this important art form. Situated in close proximity to New York City, it allows for cross-disciplinary programming. As part of the creative agenda, the gallery regularly collaborates with other art institutions and venues. Established in 2006, the gallery is surrounded by many excellent shops and restaurants and is a quick walk to The Montclair Art Museum. A short bus or train ride from Manhattan, it is easy to make a visit to the gallery a day’s destination.
The Lunatic Swing, Melbourne
The Lunatic Swing exhibition travels to its first location at Gallery Funaki in Melbourne.
The same group of artists will exhibit their work at the recently renovated gallery; Attai Chen, Carina Chitsaz-Shoshtary, Sungho Cho, Laura Deakin, Melanie Isverding and Emma Price.
Otto Künzli (the then professor to all of these now graduated artists) had this to say “since I know them all pretty well, let me elucidate: these six artists are not really crazy, or funny or even “nuts” or not quite right in the head in any other way! People like to think of artists as rather bizarre, peculiar, strange, as, go on, let’s not beat about the bush; as somewhat crackpot and mad. And sometimes the latter do behave a little bit as if they are. But in fact, and this is, after all, what really matters, we artists are the only truly normal people.”
The exhibition opens on: Monday 3rd June 2013 6-8pm and runs until the 29th June 2013.
4 Crossley Street
Melbourne, Victoria
Australia 3000
