A pair of pairs; earrings

Inari Kiuru, Dreamer's opals (2012) Mild steel, galvanised steel,
synthetic opal, 18ct gold. Created for Part B's exhbition Oh Opal!
and also shown at Studio 20/17 in Sydney.

Inari Kiuru, Earrings (2013), Mild steel, 18ct gold, crystal

Man jewellery!

Inari Kiuru 2011, Armour for the heart. Steel, glass. 

MANJEWELLERY was a project initiated by the amazing jewellist Melissa Cameron and published at Crafthaus website in 2011.

My theme for the two brooches, especially created for this virtual exhibition, was 'protection', something masculine in form but universal in nature, designed to shield and to ground.

Photograph by Marc Morel © 2011 Modelled by Shaun Tan, Marcos Guzman
Inari Kiuru 2011, Windy day anchor. Lead, iron, 18ct gold. 2011

Wedding ornaments for another time 1: Drought

Photography: © RMIT University, Melbourne 2008 >

Wedding ornaments for another time 1: Drought (Inari Kiuru 2008)
shower cable, brass taps, 925 silver, 18ct gold, found objects
fused, soldered, fabricated

Please click on the image if you want to see detail clearly - here the photo condenses into a very pixelated one for some reason!


While still photographing work from this semester and the year gone, this is something from the recent past, one of the four pieces designed and made during the traditional "fusion" project at RMIT, on our first year 2008, then taught by Mr Robert Baines. The idea was to create a neck piece which incorporated gold embedded in silver (we learned the whole process from melting granules to gradually rolling the sheet of gold and silver into a thin layer), fused sterling silver pieces (= no solder, metal joined by heat only, at the right melting point), mixed with modern materials.

My work for the brief evolved into a four piece collection of rather large "wedding ornaments" (this was the semester preceding my own wedding, hence perhaps the theme … :), imagined to belong to a future time where environmental or another catastrophe might have changed our living conditions, circumstances, and available resources significantly.

The first piece is titled "Drought", something I had been thinking about a lot at the time, after a move from Perth to Melbourne – here, we faced serious water restrictions for the first time in our lives.

white work

Amulets for Osiris (2009) 18 carat gold, electronic shrink wrap,
door bell buzzer parts, brass conductors, gold plated brass

Another archival photography moment, now when there's still ample sunshine outdoors. I made these earrings / objects as a part of our gold project (RMIT, Sarah Ross) mid last year, playfully interpreting ancient Egyptian jewellery in contemporary materials as my theme. Osiris lived in the darkness of the underworld – these were imagined amulets for bringing light in. The circular form which repeats through each piece is the oldest known symbol for the Sun.

Click on the images for more detail.

in a search for gold IV: american yellows

Santa Monica, mall-flavoured sunlight & fries 13/02/09


Our magician and the invisible Californian hummingbird,
14/02/09


Winter trees, burning with cold, JFK 25/02/09


"Yes. Frank's gone missing."
5th Avenue, 24/02/09







Before a sandstorm, Teotihuacan, 21/02/09

And

As Frank Zappa (Baltimore, Maryland) puts it:

Don't Eat The Yellow Snow

Dreamed I was an eskimo
Frozen wind began to blow
Under my boots and around my toes
The frost that bit the ground below
It was a hundred degrees below zero...

And my mama cried
And my mama cried
Nanook, a-no-no
Nanook, a-no-no
Don’t be a naughty eskimo
Save your money, don’t go to the show

Well I turned around and I said oh, oh oh
Well I turned around and I said oh, oh oh
Well I turned around and I said ho, ho
And the northern lights commenced to glow
And she said, with a tear in her eye
Watch out where the huskies go, and don’t you eat that yellow snow
Watch out where the huskies go, and don’t you eat that yellow snow

gold an fork

On Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, there is a restaurant called 'Gold an Fork'. Not 'Gold and Fork', or even 'Golden Fork' – no letters are missing from the sign. It just is an Indian restaurant, proudly named 'Gold an Fork'.
And incidentally, they serve a boiled egg with their Thali.

PS.
I had a friend who once missed her bus and was late for work.
Never helpless, she promptly flagged down a car – and was driven to the city in a Golden Egg truck.

cloud mining

You know that building sites are just a decoy:
What they are really doing is cloud mining.

Rain or shine, they mine for light, for lost gulls or sparrows,
maybe for some city gold.

I've always thought of cranes as wading birds ; )

love to love the gloves (and cloves)

This is my first post – quite obviously.
I spent the better half of the day figuring out the image upload.

Well. The cold has its bright side:

Recently returned from a long and happy journey, our luna di miele across date lines and seasons (the gloves, the mittens), unions and farewells: a wife! I stopped, and the winter flu got me before it was rightfully due.

So now, away from work (from studios, benches, desks, studies, everyday sounds of people), spending time in the suburban silence. Lying down in a semilit space, listening through muffled senses and aching everything, and then making soup for mending.

Garlic, pumpkin, a slash of knife: there is a world inside the common veg. The fresh cuts reveal ovals and arches, such pleasure in observing random repetition. And the day old shrinkage and drying pumpkin seeds, beauty in decay (or, did I hear hello middle age? By the stove, I was, but not pregnant; barefoot perhaps yes).

I had been thinking about gold. Could these shapes turn into metal, object, ornament?
I'd like to try.

White, gold, gray, the pumpkin yellow. The warped white winter suns.
The mangled flowers. The dying, drying, curling and rounding.
My kitchen blooms.