Katrina Freene Pretty in Persia Recycled printed tin, brass, silver 2006 Photo: Kat Freene

In films that exalt the ‘exotic' lay vital clues to uncovering Zara Collins and Katrina Freene's Le Boudoir Secret.

Upon hearing the term ‘le boudoir', like me, you might conjure all kinds of historical scandals and exotic fictions, which bring with them fleeting glimpses of precious jewels, lavish furnishings and dirty secrets. More than a simple bedroom, I imagine a ‘boudoir' as a place for a ‘lady' (including the Little Britain ‘lady') to do her bathing, preening, dressing, selective entertaining and other more secretive business. Historically speaking, the ‘boudoir' is fitting for my ‘lady', as this space has typically functioned as a female domain: men kept their secrets in the male ‘boudoir' equivalent known as a ‘cabinet'. While the average woman of today does not necessarily possess such an extravagant ‘boudoir', she still has areas of secrecy that are somewhat mysterious to male partners; such as the dressing table, the bathroom, or a cupboard and drawers into which everything is piled. Whether you have a boudoir, or like myself, a mere dressing table, it is likely that this location is where you stash your jewellery collection and sparkling mementoes; the items in which many a bedroom secret reside.

This exhibition, entitled Le Boudoir Secret , conjures forth, not our understated domestic bedrooms, but rather, the excessive boudoir of our imagination. Strewn about are Katrina Freene and Zara Collins' contemporary jewellery, including rings, bangles, neckpieces and other wearable items, as if the make-believe occupant of this boudoir has an endless supply. Jewellery adorns velvet and gold wall mounts, mirrors, drapery, and dark wooden furniture. Collins' provocatively tasselled red lampshades (‘Shanghai Gossip') and erotic wall hangings add to this arrangement and spill more secrets as to what supposedly goes on in this displayed room. The idea of ‘display' is pertinent to this exhibition, for it is very much a faux, arranged-for-our-perusal scene; the rich brown, red, gold and black of the furnishings brings more to the jewellery than possible with a white plinth. As well, this sense of ‘display' is aided by the Jam Factory's Gallery 2 space itself, which invites museum-like observation due to its elevated and glassed in exhibiting areas and also its small and intimate size. Freene and Collins' exposé of ‘display' takes us beyond the transparent idea of using a faux boudoir to exhibit ‘exotic' looking jewellery and objects, and rather, causes us to examine our collective cultural constructions of ‘le boudoir' and the type of jewellery it should house.

To appeal to our stereotypes of a ‘boudoir' with its many treasures, Freene and Collins have aesthetically imbued their work and display with elements of nostalgia and the ‘exotic'. These are of a particularly feminine variety, the kind which has riddled recent period film, literature and theatre. For example, in 2006 Marie Antoinette was brought back to life by Sofia Coppola (and Kirsten Dunst) enticingly devouring pastel coloured sweets in her nineteenth century French boudoir, while speculatively doing the same with lusty visitors. Renowned Japanese geisha and nobility from as early as the eleventh century have been resurrected (controversially in some cases) to reveal their rigorous boudoir secrets once bound close to their chests by tightly patterned obi. This aesthetic can also be seen on weekend re-runs of 1950s films where the ‘exotic' and ‘orient' were once employed by directors, still blissfully unaware of post-colonial theories, to exude charm and sophistication. Freene and Collins reference these period or vintage portrayals of the ‘exotic' by creating their work out of found objects already laden with histories and reminiscent of other (more appealing) and fictional times and places.

When both undertaking residencies at the Jam Factory, Freene and Collins regularly traversed the op-shops together to find materials for their practices. Freene, who has incorporated recycled materials in her jewellery for over a decade, has built her practice upon visually mixing a myriad of cultural histories, as well as setting out early on our path toward environmental sustainability. For Le Boudoir Secret , she crosses vintage metal trays with Middle Eastern designs derived from Persian rugs, Islamic architecture and tiles. Her ‘Pretty in Persia' series of neckpieces uses the bold colours of her trays against golden brass, all shaped into intricate and symmetrical patterns. In places, Freene uses the tray's imagery to cheekily suggest a tiger's peeking eye, posing stars, or a voluptuous curve, proposing that more is behind this work than just the patterns. While she claims (in her artist statement) that the referencing of Middle Eastern designs is to ‘remind people of the beauty of [this] culture amidst the current tumultuous political landscape of the region', she also subverts and challenges the ‘exotic' with her use of 1950s vintage trays. The trays, with their ‘exotic' imagery which generations ago was as familiar to the family home as The King and I (1956), are cut and re-formed by Freene into unrecognisable forms, and are cleverly made somewhat new and ‘exotic' all over again.

Collins has similarly collected found objects to use in her practice; making finds in Australia as well as overseas, particularly from Beijing, China, where she undertook an Australia-China Council Residency in 2004. For Le Boudoir Secret, her collection of elaborately designed chopsticks, discovered in local Asian supermarkets as well as abroad, are remade into series such as ‘Mandarin Memories…'. These neckpieces which feature the colourful ends of cloisonne chopsticks are made to dangle suggestively around the wearer's neck and bust. Her series of ‘Fallen Honour' rings, which are less subtle with their sexual provocativeness, are wearable sketches of a Chinese couple doing their boudoir business, inspired from aged Chinese pillow books. This Asian-blend of ‘exoticness' (this time in a sexy version) is, again, one that we are familiar with, mainly from Chinese and Japanese made or inspired film and literature. A most popular example, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000) was a celebrated Chinese period film imbued with myth, sensual suggestiveness, supernatural elements, wisdom and deep spiritual connections to appeal to audiences worldwide as nostalgic and ‘exotic' (to Chinese audiences also I would expect). In her jewellery and objects Collins exploits this ‘exotic' Asian appeal by including visual aesthetics such as the pillow book imagery or distinctly Chinese colour combinations (such as aqua and red) which cause us to project our filmic Asian-boudoir thoughts about the feminine heroine who would wear such lusty pieces.

In a distinctly different manner from her ‘Pretty in Persia' series, Freene has also approached this exposé of the ‘boudoir' by showing her oversized rings that have grown to fit wrists rather than fingers. These designs which have been part of Freene's practice since as early as 2002 have fun with their drastic enlarging of what are traditionally conservative jewellery designs; the solitaire diamond engagement ring and the engraved and heart laden signet ring. As if suffering a bout of gigantism these bangles are heavily burdened by enormous jewels and bulky metal designs, which, I imagine, would cause them to swing around your wrist. For Le Boudoir Secret, though the designs of these bangles are too common to be read as ‘exotic', they can certainly be seen as nostalgic clichés from one's past. Gaudy with their overstated preciousness and glitz, they are simultaneously valuable for their links to childhood memories and momentous life occasions.

The aesthetic presence of nostalgia and ‘exoticness' in this exhibition is testament to the current appeal of the vintage; be it in film, fashion, design and craft culture. With their use of recycled and found objects, these artists—just two of a growing number opting for ‘vintage' in their contemporary practice—reflect some discontent with the current state of the world. By mixing the ‘exotic' (the unknown and more attractive ‘other') with the vintage (the nostalgically appealing), they hark back to the way things once were, in a make-believe world and before our current environmental and political unrest. Even though these fictional pasts had their share of distasteful moments, through the eyes of nostalgia this is removed and replaced by exciting and dazzling ‘exoticness'. Freene's Middle Eastern inspired jewellery, and Collins' Asian influenced designs are contemporary, yet derive from this romanticised past. With their elaborate shapes and bold colours they camouflage themselves as inherited treasures, trinkets of lost love, or memories of times spent abroad to adorn the bodies of actresses who traverse time and reality (in painted sets) to recreate a more desirable existence.