The Sydney launch of Gold and Silversmithing in Western Australia – A History, by Dorothy Erickson, will coincide with the exhibition opening Cinderella Stories – Contemporary Jewellery from Western Australia.
Dorothy Erickson’s book will be launched by former WA Premier, Professor Geoff Gallop AC, and the exhibition opened by Eva Czernis-Rhyl, Curator, Art and Design, Powerhouse Museum, on Sunday 6th November, 2011.
Cinderella Stories derives from the colloquial name – Cinderella of the South – given to Western Australian during the discovery of gold in the 1880s .
The exhibiting jewellers, who are featured in the contemporary section, are; Dorothy Erickson, Felicity Peters, Gillian Rainer, Brenda Ridgewell, Christel van der Laan and David Walker, each have had considerable success internationally, being collected by major art institutions in Europe, America and Asia.
The critic Ted Snell wrote in 2006, that Western Australian jewellery showed “..characteristics that have resulted in a unique vision and a freshness of approach to problem solving… In tune with what is happening internationally and based locally, where fewer constraints makes everything seem possible, … a surprisingly large cohort of locally based practitioners have established themselves as significant figures in the international arena of contemporary jewellery…”