By Derek Schlennstedt
What makes something precious? When does something become precious for not so obvious reasons?
These are the questions that Healesville artist Ali Griffin and goldsmith Tim Peel are asking in their collaborative exhibition featuring at The Memo in Healesville.
In a society where money is more important than ever, the aptly titled exhibition ‘Precious’ focuses on discovering what makes an item special to its owner.
“It’s the whole conversation about what’s precious and what’s important to you … we want people to think about what they find precious,” Ali said.
“We’re looking to really start a conversation, engage people to think about what is precious to them,” Tim said.
The collaboration between the two Healesville artists has seen two different esoteric concepts come together, and despite their differences in background, the two complement each other wonderfully.
Connection to memory and the values placed upon seemingly valueless objects are the concepts informing Healesville Ali Griffin’s work.
In juxtaposition this concept is challenged by collaborating with Tim, a goldsmith who usually works with priceless materials.
Though priceless materials often take on a sentimentality of their own and they are often attached to a signifcant memory, which Tim has explored in his work.
“The objects that we place memories in can be utterly valueless but they hold memories and valuable memories to that individual, and so they became extremely valuable and more than that, they become irreplaceable,” Tim said.
This too also complements Ali’s work who has utilised charcoal in her jewellery along with melted bottles, from the Black Saturday fires in which she lost her home.
Through the palette of black, charcoal, and gold leaf laced sparingly though it, Ali explores the potential of the “stuff” around us, of loss, of renewal, of what is truly precious.
“It’s a collaboration of ideas, that these things suddenly became precious to me, melted bottles … there wasn’t anything precious about them before, but once they were melted they took on a different meaning and connection to me,” Ali said.
Precious will be held at The Memo in Healesville until 21 November with the opening taking place on 13 September at 6pm.
