INGALLERY.1 and ONLINE
01 – 23 November 2014
Twenty-first Century Work: Dorothy Erickson
This exhibition celebrates forty five years of jewellery making by internationally recognised Australian artist Dorothy Erickson. The work on exhibition is diverse and includes pieces from her Homage to Klimt series featuring precious and semi-precious stones set in gold and her well known Kinetic and the more recent Wildflower Collections.
Exhibition opened by Joanna Mendelssohn, Associate Professor UNSW Art & Design, on Sunday 2nd November 2014
Internationally recognised Australian artist jeweller, Dorothy Erickson has successfully exhibited world wide since 1979. She is represented major Public collections including the Schmuckmuseum, Pforzheim, Germany, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Koch Collection Switzerland, Australian National Gallery, Art Galleries of Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland, the Powerhouse Museum, NSW, and Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston Tasmania.
Dorothy’s work primarily draws inspiration from the flora, fauna, colours and light of Western Australia. The first years of the twenty-first century saw her making work based on the paintings of the Austrian Gustav Klimt, following a stint in Vienna and a solo exhibition in the legendary Galerie am Graben.
Erickson, the daughter of a prominent naturalist, botanical illustrator and author, has been immersed in the unique flora that is Western Australia´s heritage for as long as she can remember. She painted wildflowers as a child and in the 1960s researched at Kew Herbarium and the Natural History Museum, South Kensington London while studying at the Chelsea Institute at night. However it has only been since she was commissioned in 2009 to write A Joy Forever: The Story of Kings Park – Perth’s iconic park and botanic garden followed closely by the death of her mother, that she turned her attention to Western Australia’s unique flora as a subject for her jewellery.
The work on exhibition is diverse with the Homage to Klimt selection featuring precious and semi-precious stones set in gold capturing the essence of Klimt´s paintings, to her well known kinetic Jewellery and recent Wildflower Collections.
Few of the jewellery pieces are literal translations of Australian wildflowers, instead they are evocations of colour, form or habit of individual species of our precious and endangered heritage.
This exhibition celebrates forty five years of jewellery and includes newly commenced pieces for her Connections Collection, based on research into her antecedents and their occupations in Australia, Scotland, Wales, England and Sweden.
Dr Erickson (Phd UWA) is also a significant author, her recent books include: A Joy Forever: The Story of Kings Park (2009), Gold and Silversmithing in Western Australia: A History (2010), and her most recent publication, Inspired by Light and Land: Designers and Makers in Western Australia 1829-1969 (2015).
