Julia deVille - Night's Plutonian Shore

Julia DeVille is a jewellery artist, from Wellington but now based in Melbourne. She appears at Gilberd Marriott Gallery in conjunction with Jemposium (organised by Peter Deckers).

Artist's statement:
I am fascinated with the aesthetic used to communicate mortality in the Memento Mori period of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, as well as the methods the Victorians used to sentimentalise death with adornment.

I work predominately in traditional gold and silversmithing techniques, combined with materials that were once living such as jet, a petrified wood historically used in Victorian Mourning jewellery, human hair and most importantly, taxidermy. I use these materials as a Memento Mori, or reminder of our mortality.

I incorporate the symbols of death through out my work because I think it is important to identify with the concept that we are in fact mortal creatures. The nature of our culture is to obsess over planning the future, however in doing so, we forget to enjoy the present.

I consider my taxidermy to be a celebration of life, a preservation of something beautiful. I feel strongly about the fair and just treatment of animals and to accentuate this point I use only animals that have died of natural causes.

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