Mixed Media Jewellery at Manchester Gallery and Salts Mill

Recently on a visit to Manchester I visited the Manchester Art Gallery to look at they're jewellery display. On the whole I was underwhelmed by the display of jewellery as it didn't look like anything new or innovative. However one artists whose jewellery i could appreciate was Angela O'Kelly. She creates bold jewewllery such as bangles using materials such as paper, felt, fabric, and steel. Her use of materials such as paper is something that i have never seen before in jewellery, but the combination of materials is really effective in created texture and line. I also love her use of colour which is bold just like the overall feel of the jewellery. Specifically I loved the colours in one of her sculptural arm pieces where she used pink, green, purple, red and orange. The overall effect was bright and very tropical and it felt quite uplifting. I also visited the Kath Libbert jewellery exhibition 'Fragments' at Salt's Mill which shows the work of young graduates and helps them 'find their place'. I found this exhibition a lot more refreshing withh more boundary pushing ideas. two of the jewellery designers i particulalry loved were Kelly Munro and Emma Gregory. Kelly's work looks at weathering wood and metal with charring, painting and inticate sawed net work producing beautiful structures made up of delicate layers. Emma's work is very different, using only stainless steel wire to produce isometric shapes inspired by the lattice structure of gold. I love the delicateness of her work and how she experiments with new technology such as laser welding machinery to produce her work. After visiting these two exhibitions it's inspired me to use materials that are not nessecarily expected and to push the boundaries when experimenting with them.