Two new Objectspace installations to check out

Best In Show 2009

Best In Show is Objectspace’s fifth annual exhibition in a series which showcases a handpicked selection of outstanding craft and design graduates. The Best In Show format has proven itself to be an important event within the annual craft and design exhibition calendar and Objectspace is proud to have represented a range of new voices over the last five editions of Best In Show. The fourteen exhibitors in this year’s exhibition encompass the exciting and varied terrain of spatial, graphic and textile design along with ceramics, jewellery and object art installation.

Previous Best In Show exhibitors have moved on to win design awards and competitions, establish themselves within their chosen fields and some are already moving into roles as mentors and teachers. If there is a theme or feeling that stands out among these fourteen exhibitors in 2009, it is that critical engagement is positioned foremost within their varied practices in conceiving and making intelligent objects.

Jacqui Chan’s Exotic Blend

A reflection upon cross cultural heritage, Jacqui Chan’s Exotic Blend signifies her desire, as a contemporary jeweller, to embody the particular form of chinoiserie endemic to her New Zealand upbringing.

The artist notes that “growing up initially in bicultural Whakatane and later the homogenous Pakeha-dominant South Island, there was little reflection of our Chinese half in life outside our home. It was therefore somewhat natural that our sense of Chineseness became entwined with domestic objects. Rice pattern bowls, our Chinese teapot, painted fans, shitake mushrooms, and the mahjong set were day-to-day evidence of our cultural heritage and imagery with which to imagine China.”

With this body of work Chan was drawn to tea tins for the symbolism they engender. The exotic imagery depicted in tea tins is, she observes, equally distant from modern China as it is from England. Cut up, pierced, folded and tricked into wearable brooch forms, the tea tin is reclaimed by the artist.

Jacqui Chan is a New Zealand artist. Trained as an architect and then a jeweller, she will be undertaking doctoral studies in Australia from 2009.