Upcoming

February 6, 2010

Melissa is heading to Perth in early April where she will present a paper (provisionally titled 'examining the connections between architecture and jewellery') at the 2010 Jewellers and Metalsmiths Group of Australia conference. 

Entitled reSource, the biennial conference attracts jewellers from across the country, and from around the world, for three days of presentations, discussions and related exhibitions. This celebration of the vibrant Australian jewellery culture and its practitioners will also see Melissa curating an exhibition for the first time.

The show, entitled Return, will bring together five jewellery artists who spent their formative years in Western Australia. Melissa, Michelle, Regina, Belinda and Robin all studied jewellery making at Curtin University at one time or another, and have all since left Perth while maintaining their respective careers as jewellery artists and artisans. For many, this is the first opportunity outside the university to show their exhibition-quality work to a home-town crowd. It's shaping up to be a memorable show.

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At the last update, Melissa had just graduated her MFA from Monash University in Melbourne and held her first solo exhibition at Metalab gallery in Sydney in November of 2009. Since then Melissa's work has featured in the annual Christmas exhibition at Craft Victoria as well as the similarly themed Feast show in Sydney presented by Studio 2017.

In December Melissa also received an ArtStart grant from the Australian Council for the Arts, and in January she set about spending it! Her work from last years Buda exhibition is currently in the Morning Peninsula Regional Gallery and her Staggered Eight Point Star piece is in a show at the Stephen F Austin State University in the biennial juried Refined exhibition. Melissa has now secured her own studio space in St Kilda and is making it ready so she can get to work on some new pieces for the Return show in Perth, as well as adding the finishing touches to her JMGA conference paper.