Anna Davern, Nereides, 2024, installation at e.g.etal

Anna Davern writes about her series of beaded pins inspired by the ancient Greek myth of sea nymphs.

In Greek mythology, the Nereids were fifty sea nymphs, daughters of Nereus, the “Old Man of the Sea,” and Doris, an Oceanid. They were renowned for their beauty and kindness, often depicted as benevolent beings who assisted sailors and fishermen by ensuring safe voyages. The Nereids resided in a golden palace beneath the Aegean Sea with their father. Notable among them were Thetis, who became the mother of Achilles; Amphitrite, the wife of Poseidon; and Galatea, known for her association with the Cyclops Polyphemus.

In the autumn of 2000, I had my first solo exhibition at Reliquiae. One of the works in the show consisted of a group of tall silver pins with botanically shaped frames which were woven with glass beads, with each pin standing upright in its own little stand. My focus for the exhibition was to explore people’s relationships to objects and how this relationship might change between viewing objects as a group in a gallery, engaging with the autonomous object on a shelf in your home, and then placing the object on your body.

This exhibition was a precursor to the development of a successful range of production jewellery which I named the Reef range. The frames and the brightly coloured beads reference the forms and colours that are found in the fishes and corals of our ocean reefs.

e.g.etal recently celebrated the gallery’s 25th year, and I was inspired to revisit the themes from the exhibition, make a new series of Reef pins, and introduce some of the elements that had been added to the Reef range over the years, such as the use of precious and semi-precious gemstones, the move to using gold as well as silver, and the use of CAD technology to build the frames.

Blades of seagrass grow in shallow water in Raja Ampat, Indonesia

The 2000 exhibition was based on terrestrial botanical forms, and I was prompted by the aquarium-like vitrine at e.g.etal to move my inspiration underwater. While researching Australia’s marine plant life, I found out about the rhizomatous structure of seagrass meadows and how each plant may appear autonomous above the seabed, but it is, in actual fact, part of one much larger organism, potentially hundreds of kilometres in size. This resonated with the idea that each pin would have a life within a group, as well as a life as an individual object and as an object being worn. So the pins in the exhibition Nereides are based on the forms of three of Australia’s seagrass species: Posidonia australis, Amphibolis antarctica and Halophila ovalis.

There were 24 individual pins in Nereides, ranging from 10 – 33 cm tall. Each pin stood in its own discrete stand made from silver and mild steel. They were displayed in the vitrine at e.g.etal on a series of raised contoured platforms, which mimicked the undulations of the sandy seabed. The pin frames were constructed from silver and yellow gold and were woven with a mixture of precious and semi-precious gemstone beads and pearls. Each pin could be removed from its stand to be worn as a pin in the hair or to secure a scarf around the neck.

Nereides – Anna Davern, e.g.etal, Melbourne, Australia, May 2024.

About Anna Davern

I live and work in the wonderful city of Naarm Melbourne. I trained as a contemporary jeweller at Sydney College of the Arts and RMIT, and I currently make “stuff” from my light-filled, 9th-floor studio in the iconic Nicholas Building in Melbourne’s CBD. “Stuff” includes but is not limited by the term jewellery. I work mainly with metal, and the jeweller in me is intrigued by the nature of the relationships we have with objects, particularly how the process of touching and being touched by art objects enhances these relationships. Visit annadavern.com and follow @annadavern

Tags

exhibition | G38 | jewellery | Melbourne | ocean