Manon van Kouswijk, Fabrizio Tridenti and Ted Noten

Objectspace is delighted to present two engaging installations by three internationally renowned jewellers Manon van Kouswijk, Fabrizio Tridenti and Ted Noten, timed to coincide with JEMposium in Wellington, New Zealand's international contemporary jewellery symposium. Manon van Kouswijk (Netherlands/Australia), Fabrizio Tridenti (Italy) and Ted Noten (Netherlands) are leading practitioners of contemporary jewellery with highly distinctive practices. The possibility of these makers, who currently reside in three different countries, exhibiting at Objectspace together, arises because they are in New Zealand as keynote speakers at JEMposium.

For their installations at Objectspace Tridenti and van Kouswijk have, while conferring with each other, individually responded to the gallery space. Objectspace has engaged two international writers, based in different hemispheres from their subjects, to write about these jewellers. Benjamin Lignel (France) has written about Manon van Kouswijk and Meredith Turnbull (Australia) has written about Fabrizio Tridenti for Objectspace's online publication.

Fabrizio Tridenti's installation "Anything" is concerned with the translation of objects and materials from one realm of production into another, specifically of materials from technical, mechanical and industrial contexts into fine art wearables and sculpture. Components more regularly found on the assembly line or in the hardware store such as tubular gaskets, exhaust rubber, gas pipes, wheels, pulleys and auto-parts these items are constituted by Tridenti as necklaces, pendants, bracelets and rings. Whilst still recognisably belonging to the industrial and mechanical worlds writer Meredith Turnbull observes in her essay "Anything into Eternity" that these works "function as past, present and future objects".

Manon van Kouswijk's installation "Perles d' Artistes" is also the name of an ongoing project focused on making a series of necklaces made on the basis of a strict method. The beads of no.1 necklace are made with two fingertips, no.2 with four fingertips, no.3 with six, no.4 with eight and no.5 with ten. First exhibited in 2009, the objects offer up to scrutiny little else than just that: a series of white (and then coloured) strung beads sporting a growing number of facets, arranged on the page (and in the gallery) as one would geometric models, from the simplest (a large lentil) to the more complex (an irregular decahedron).

Ted Noten is a highly respected jeweller who has won numerous awards and accolades including international jewellery's prestigious Françoise van den Bosch Award (2008). In "Ted Noten: gold, sweat & pearls" he says, "I make jewellery that takes some time getting used to. When you wear it, you make yourself vulnerable as it makes such a striking statement. I speak out through my jewellery and objects. I comment upon jewellery as a phenomenon, upon the industry or - like any artist - upon humanity."

Working as Atelier Ted Noten, Ted Noten has stepped beyond the sphere of contemporary jewellery and created a high profile and successful international practice as a contemporary artist and designer which includes art and design projects, installations and commissions for private collectors, cultural organisations and art institutions. In 2011 Noten won the Dutch Artist of the Year award. Noten has previously shown at Objectspace in the 2007 exhibition "European Voices" in the Objectspace Vault.

Publication (online): Manon van Kouswijk and Fabrizio Tridenti
Available at www.objectspace.org.nz

Image credit: Manon van Kouswijk, Perles d'Artiste, no. 3, 5, 4, 5, and 4 (detail). 2009. Modelling porcelain, pigment, glaze, thread. Courtesy of the artist.

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