Funaki guest posts on materiality 3: Concrete

And finally, here's my third offering in the guest post series for Funaki, last winter during the early days of the pandemic when the gallery was closed and we were looking for alternative ways to communicate and interact. I wrote about materials I use, know and love: enamel, steel and concrete. Here's concrete! 

I was fortunate to discover this interesting character almost by accident. Some years ago, a bag from Bunnings was my leap of faith (yup, a panic solution) while planning a sculptural installation with no equipment to fabricate metal in a large scale. Concrete offered an alternative to work without heat or special tools, and allowed free experimentation without financial concerns. Soon, there was no return. 

At first glance–feel–concrete is heavy and dense, cool to the touch. It carries associations of construction and the industrial; of urban structures and surfaces; of my immediate world and visual interests. It can be rough, or polished like smooth marble, and is a reliable protector of fragile materials, such as glass, embedded. - From an intimate distance, concrete also reveals its sensual and sensitive side. Toned with natural pigments, the shades resonate with things I keep returning to: The light at dusk and dawn; the changing skies, seasons and weather patterns … all somehow connected to our own human emotions in flux. This poetic nature of concrete keeps surprising and captivating me. 

Finally, I think it’s great concrete is used by thousands of DIY enthusiasts, for all sorts of objects and ornaments. This gives it a democratic, joyous quality. Anyone can use concrete, giving such obvious satisfaction to those who may not otherwise be creatively engaged. It’s the material of inspiration and possibility! 

Images (including the floor of Funaki on Crossley St): Inari Kiuru, 2015-2020 

 

Funaki guest posts on materiality 2: Steel

Last winter during the early pandemic days of 2020, the physical gallery space closed, Funaki's artists were invited to create guest posts in Instagram, about anything we liked. Here's my second entry on materials I use and love (please also see the previous blog post about enamel). 

Let’s talk about STEEL. I love steel. It’s a metal that’s been with me from the start, for practical and aesthetic reasons. 

First, I love the applications of steel in our urban environment: The intricate metal structures and tall cranes at construction sites; huge diggers like strange animals; ships and sea containers, the battered back doors of trucks. I love the ordinariness of this material and the divinely beautiful way it surrenders to its environments, accepting scratches, stains, rust … the marks of time, never losing its integrity. 

I can weld steel, making jewellery pieces and vessels structurally safe while subjected to high heat in the kiln for enamelling or colouring. Soldered seams will reflow and collapse in temperatures over 800 Celcius whereas welded connections (metal joined to itself with electricity) remain intact. Anyone who works with steel also knows it can be temperamental as it rusts (maddeningly!) easily and is harder to cut and clean than precious metals. Sometimes its sharp edges make you bleed. But all is forgiven for its amazing scale of expression: I love the deep blues of heated mild steel, the chemical, snowflake-like zinc patterns on galvanized surfaces and the elegant grays they turn into when heated (although this process is toxic.). 

I love the shine. precision and strength of stainless steel, as well as the warm rusted tones and quiet stories told by old, abandoned pieces. I love the way stained steel sometimes looks like silk, sometimes like a landscape–but always still like steel. 

Images: Inari Kiuru 2008-2020, Mild and galvanized steel 

 

Funaki guest posts on materiality 1: Enamel

Last winter during the early pandemic days, Funaki's artists were invited to guest post in Instagram, about anything we liked. I prepared three entries, each about a different material I use and love. Here are those posts, each as their own, starting with ENAMEL. 

I thank my location stars for learning this art, as I studied silversmithing here in Melbourne at RMIT University. They, uniquely, have a long history of enamelling with masters such as Helen Aitken-Kuhnen and Debbie Sheezel having taught there prior to my own brilliant teacher, Dr Kirsten Haydon. 

As patience and fine motor skills are needed in the traditional techniques, my beginnings were naturally full of tears–and this was just the teacher ;) However, a 2010 workshop with Prof. Elizabeth Turrell introducing liquid enamel (also referred to as industrial enamel, see below) was a turning point. The application of a fluid mix and drawing onto it allowed a freedom I’d craved, and eventually gave me enough confidence to keep working with the ultimately very satisfying powdered enamel. 

The traditional vitreous (Latin ‘vitreum’ means glass) enamelling dates back to the 13th century BC. Coloured glass powders are carefully applied onto a base, usually metal, and fused by heat into a strong luminous surface. From the 19th century, enamel began to be used industrially: A liquid glass mix is fired in huge kilns to form a durable coating for everyday domestic wares such as our familiar bathtubs and fridge doors. It’s worth noting too that enamel paint (“cold enamel”) and liquid enamel are two very different things. 

The images (IK 2010-19) show you samples of enamel on steel and copper: Shifted (earrings, pendant); liquid (samples, brooch, vessels), and decals (images in enamel). 

For beautiful pieces in different styles, please also see the work of the artists mentioned in this post. 

 

Radiant Pavilion – Melbourne Contemporary Jewellery and Object Trail, September 2015

The amazing Chloë Powell and Claire McArdle have been busy, thinking up and organising this event. Take note and use a permanent marker for your calendar now: 1-6 September 2015 will be THE days to be in Melbourne, to enjoy, exhibit, explore and discuss contemporary jewellery and objects. Here is the announcement of Radiant Pavilion website launch for more information:

www.radiantpavilion.com.au

Mari Funaki Award for Contemporary Jewellery

These are the last days to see an interesting, beautiful collection of contemporary jewellery from international and Australian, established and emerging, artists at Gallery Funaki, Melbourne:
The Mari Funaki Award for Contemporary Jewellery exhibition.

I am over the moon and very humbled to be a part of this amazing show (insert muffled screams of happiness onto the serious text here!!!). Two of the brooches below from my Evolution-series, the larger steel piece and the brooch in the lower image, were selected to participate. They received a Judges' Commendation for emerging jeweller's work (more screams!!!). 

A heartfelt thank you to the Gallery Director Katie Scott, Award Manager Chloe Powell, and the Judges Julie Ewington, Warwick Freeman, and Simon Cottrell.

The exhibition closes on September 13. Be quick!

PS. More images with details also here on Klimt02.

Brooches from the Evolution-series, 2013
Stainless steel, mild steel, crystals, iron, clay, patina, paint
70x130x70mm; 70x120x60mm

Hello 2014 and beyond!

Yes, HELLO!

Nearly two years have passed since my previous Season's Greetings post, in 2012. Time has flown, and there have been big changes in my life. The greatest of them all was welcoming our daughter into the world in June 2013. She is a beautiful (and very strong-willed, independent) mystery, and the past 15 months have been an intensive, wonderful road into the unknown, together as a family. Now we can all finally walk, so it's getting a bit easier.

I also finished my degree, Honours in Object Based Design, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, in June 2013. In fact, I put the very final touches on the final pieces for assessment just six hours before my baby was born. Now that is a busy week, don't you think!

Now it's time to get back into making and creative communication. Spring is here, the world is turning as it should be, and life is an open book. I shall start posting regularly again, starting with pictures of work from the recent past, to bring the online record up to date.

I'll also be present in Instagram as ordinari_observer.

A big thank you for those who've been reading my blog regularly and who might find their way here again, or for the first time. It would be great if you could join me on this next part of the journey.

Here we go!

Inari x

Images: 
To link the last post of 2012 and this first of 2014, here are some of the final images that grew from the industrial moth sketches (post below) into the Saturnalia Industrialis-series of brooches, models and giclee prints during 2012 and 2013.

On a wing and a prayer

I love how the texture on the praying mantis' back is so similar to the pattern of human skin.
Or is it the other way round?
If you click on the image, you can see this in much better detail.

brunswick gold 2: my beloved rubbish

Two torn notes found on a garden bed, Albert Street, next to each other.
"Can you m..... the kids?" and "SKELETON!"

The toll free Family Helpline number is...

: )

* * *

There are two things I love to do while walking around: Picking up small discarded objects or natural materials, and documenting the random aesthetic of rubbish, rust and stains and the like, in which I often find immeasurable beauty and unexpected, interesting compositions and forms.

First, regarding "rubbish". What I get from studying it:

1.
Being on a lookout makes a simple walk around the block interesting: you never know what you are going to see or find. It keeps the imagination alive, and regularly moving around the neighbourhood, noticing the people, seasonal changes and happenings also brings a sense of "belonging". Something that I miss (or have always missed).

2.
It makes me concentrate on the here and now. Noticing and closely studying, perhaps then photographing, details of texture, colour and form is one of the best meditations I know. Everything else fades into the background for a while.

3.
The accidental, random clusters and palettes of colour are a source of inspiration which I regularly transform into my work, of designing and creating ornaments, objects, pictures, paintings. This is a good way of coming up with new associations, and breaking a habit of line or form (I tend to produce an alarmingly similar range of shapes over and over if I don't consciously attempt to break away from what my hand is used to).

4.
Somehow, I find that actively looking for detail, colour and form keeps the eye "alert" and helps in developing awareness of composition. I have noticed that often, after an intensive stint of rubbish hunting or object collecting (and then arranging and playing with the findings) I afterwards begin to notice people's faces and gestures, buildings and places, spatial relationships and patterns in a more acute and detailed way, too.

5.
It keeps me optimistic. Getting pleasure from small, abandoned morsels and incidental collisions of ordinary things enforces my core belief regarding life – that negative will always be balanced with positive. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.





















shed, eclipse, silent sand



















"It's in the trees!"


Rubbish no more – now at Saver's shelves.
I want to make a giant neck piece out of these, layers and layers of beautiful curves, luminous layers and something black / red / grey mised into the structure …

PS.
Next / soon about found objects and the joy of arranging them.
In fact, I was thinking I should try and create & document one quick design per day, put together from shapes / objects / bits and pieces I find. Just to keep in the habit of making quick decisions, in order to not forget how to have fun with making, and to train myself to SIMPLIFY things. The daily "pieces" could be just sketches or visual plans, and the format a blog allows could be a good way of keeping track of these "random jewels". Maybe I could then get to make them into real pieces a bit later. Yay.
- IK