As the momentum built towards The South Project’s official kickoff, the South 1 (The Gathering) forum, the first artists to formally engage with the project were, in fact, school children. The City of Melbourne’s recent initiative Artplay, at which children have the opportunity to work with professional artists, hosted two makers in residence from southern climes: Chilean jeweller Guillermina Antunez Velasco and South African sculptor Michael Mbata. Antunez Velasco’s recent exhibition at Craft Victoria, ‘Stones’, provided a better insight into her work sans glue, glitter and paint and rugrats. The work in this show was simple in appearance, employing riverstones and glass disks in austere silver settings, elegant and unfussy, while simultaneously organic, warm and tactile. She chats with Emily Howes about her background, her work and about being a jeweller in Chile.
Your parents are visual artists, and you began your career as a sculptor, what eventually led you to jewellery?
Jewellery is sculpture in small format. Same sculpture techniques but in small format. I studied in the Catholic University in Santiago. I studied art, in the sculptural area, and I thought that I needed more. The real story is that I went to a studio where the sculptures were being forged, with a hammer and big tweezers and so on, and he said ‘Just come to my studio one afternoon and you can see what it’s about.’ So I went, and it was terrible for me because everything was so big, I couldn’t get a hold on things because everything was so big. I had to use enormous gloves, enormous tweezers, you have to have enormous muscles to create what you want to, even if it is small, you have to use enormous hammers, and it was too much for me. I realised I wanted to create small things. I had made many big sculptures, but that was the point where I realised that I needed small things. So I had made a natural size gorilla, sitting down, which I made with branches as the structure, paper and then wire, and there’s a lot of knots, a lot of detail. So there’s this big thing, he’s gigantic and he’s very strong, but it’s like he’s knitted. It has the details, like a lot of wires and painting with a small paint brush, the details, so there’s a lot of small work in big things. Ever since I was tiny I was always picking flowers and small little things. So I thought I must try jewellery because, like with forging, you can do that with jewellery, you can do like the same casting techniques, all the techniques of casting, the same ones, in a small format, like rings and so on. All the techniques, the same techniques, but in a small format. And there are many other techniques, like there’s one with a lot of layers of metal that you can only do with a small format like jewellery that you can’t do with sculpture. Mokume gane, I think it’s a Japanese technique, where you use lots of different layers of metal. It’s another world. So I was just going to study that as I was going to finish university, just to learn something else and to have more information, and I loved it!
Another thing about jewellery is how, because it is smaller, it is worn on the body. How does the human bearer of the object impact on your work?
It is absolutely important. With the jewellery I make, I’m always worried about the fit, in Spanish we say calza, it fits in perfectly, it is meant to be, it is like it was part of your body. I like jewellery to be a part of your body. I’m always worried about the bones, like the collarbones. I like the jewellery to walk over the bones, under the bones or on top of the bones. If they are there then they have to be comfortable. I like the chokers to sit in the little hole at the base of the throat. They sit on the body. Each body is different. I make things for me because I’m my model, I fit things to my body, but maybe if you wear it, your bones are different, so I like to move and change the fit. Sometimes you can put it on and it is sticking out or something. It needs moulding. I don’t believe that jewellery fits everybody. Small items can sometimes be more universal but I like to make big jewellery, and it has to fit in.
That’s funny, so even now that you’re reduced the format of your work, moving from sculpture to jewellery because jewellery was smaller, you are still making large items of jewellery.
Small and large, I like both. It sounds a bit crazy but for me, for my personality, it works absolutely: I like really sober things, small things, or I like really big things, cheerful things, at the same time. I say that subsequently in my jewellery I like really plain things, like a stone on a piece of metal, really sober, really quiet, and at the same time I have a thing full of colours, really shiny, like I like both things. I’m a bit both ways. I love shiny stuff and many colours and glitter, and I like simplicity, really clean. So I don’t just work in big things, I like small things too. I like to change. And about the body, too, the people who wear it. I don’t like the model thing. Many people say to me ‘oh, my hands are not beautiful so I can’t wear this ring’. Everybody sees many problems that other people don’t see, they say ‘I have short fingers, fat, this doesn’t look good because…’. They think their hands have to be perfect. And I don’t think so. I think that each hand and each person has their beauty. It doesn’t matter. You can be really skinny or really fat, you can have your bones sticking out, you can have a big nose, whatever. What I’m interested in is that my jewellery fits the personality. That the person who buys it and puts it on that it fits that person not only ergonomically, that it is comfortable, but it also fits the personality. My dream is to have an exhibition where I have many different people wearing my jeweller... So you can see people with jewellery that they like, that they feel comfortable with, and they’re not acting. They are just being themselves. Even on a person that doesn’t have beautiful hands or doesn’t have whatever you are told you should have, to have them all together I think that’s the best exhibition you can have. People just being natural, being themselves. You look at people and you say ‘That ring looks wonderful, she really uses it well, she moves her hand, she likes it, it is part of her.’ It doesn’t matter who that person is.
I’m really intrigued by your use of riverstones and so on in your work. Can you tell me a bit about how your use of natural elements relates to your design philosophy?
Before, because I came from sculpture, I worked with metal and stones were too much for me. I started to design something and I couldn’t fit the stone in it. I’d say ‘I’m going to make this ring and it is going to have a stone here. So I started making the ring and the stone didn’t fit because the metal worked alone. So I said I want to put in some stones, some colour, so I started to work with really simple stones, not bright colours because they were too much information. Just the stone alone. I didn’t have anything to do with this, I can’t change it, it is so beautiful I can’t do anything, it works by itself, I would mess it up. With this beautiful stone I would just need to put a wire around it to hold it, but then it is no fun for me because then I’m just putting stones on wire, which is very simple, very clean, but I like to create more. So I started to use simple stones, not very shiny, and plain glass, just a piece of glass, just simple things. Then I started relating with stones that are very shiny and have colours and patterns, I got friendly with them but they were too much information to use.
That’s one reason the other reason is that I’m influenced by my mother. My mother makes tapestry. My mother is Bolivian and her tapestries are very clean lines, very natural colours, she uses alpaca, and her inspiration point is the Bolivian highlands, where you have these high altitudes, and there are no bright colours, there’s a lot of earth colours, stones, the earth, the mountains, they all have these natural earth colours. So her weaving is all like that, she uses natural colours, wool, and to contrast that she used stones for a long time. She would make a hole in the stone and hang it. Beautiful stones, normally riverstones washed by the mountain that had detail, just one detail. Big stones, enormous ones, she would make a hole and she would hang them, and at the back there would be a weaving of natural wool that changes from dark brown to lighter brown to white to black, like the colours of the mountain, like the layers of the earth, with the stone. All my life I’ve been collecting stones. I was born doing that and all my uncles do that and my house is full of stones, and my mother collects stones so it is part of my family. We are always looking at the ground and picking up a stone. So then I said, well, why can’t I use a riverstone? Like really use it? They are so beautiful, we have them on the table, and they are soft when you touch them, and you put them in your pocket and you are touching them. For us it is not a stone that you step on. You want to own it and you want to have it, like a jewel, it produces the same amount of anxiety one have about something that is precious.
How much does your Chilean nationality influence your work?
The influences I have had are my mother and my father. They were both artists and we went to many countries. We lived in Europe for ten yeas, and they were always creating Chilean things. We were Chilean, or Bolivian. My father was a painter and he used really simple lines, my mother too used really simple lines, my father used a lot of colour, my mother doesn’t use a lot of colour. My mother and my father both of them worked with nature. Always ‘look at this, look at that, look at the sun, look at the sky, the contrast!’ I was taught to look at everything with these two artists that are always working because it is they way they see life. You really absorb that. I left Chile when I was a year and a half so I didn’t have much of Chile, but I had it through my father, and I had Bolivia through my mother. It is not that I have lived all my life in Chile but I have absorbed it through my parents. The aesthetic part that they taught me, that I lived in, is them, so that is my first aesthetic knowledge. When I went back to Chile when I was eleven years old, since then I have been understanding everything they taught me and when I go to Bolivia, I go there very often because my mother’s family is there, I understand her and what she has taught me. I know where it comes from. So about Chile, I studied jewellery, and the Mapuches had really simple jewellery, I mean it is not simple in a bad way, it is simple in a good way. They use silver sheet and they start from there. That’s their technique. From there they have made wonderful things, but they don’t have many techniques, just one, they don’t have many metals, they don’t fuse metals, just one metal and they work with that. And I like that. It is really simple, it’s a strong image. They are big things, made out of one piece, like big earrings made out of one piece, and for me that is really inspiring. And it is the simple thing that I see in my mother and my father, it comes together. I had to make some work about the north of Chile and there I got the stones and the same thing I said about Bolivia, there is no bright colours but the people wear bright colours, so there’s a very plain and monochrome view but there is a bright dot, and that bright dot is a woman with her shawl, red with blue and she wears ribbons, but aesthetically she is really clean. Like purity of concept and colour and a very clean image.
At your recent residence at Artplay, you showed the children images of Mapuche people and indigenous Chilean jewellery. How did Australian children respond to these images and to having a Chilean teacher?
It was really good, because they are not all from Australia. Their parents might have come from somewhere else or they might themselves have just arrived, but they know where their culture is. They always say ‘Oh I know what this is like! In my homeland in (I don’t know) Ethiopia there is a picture of my grandmother and she used to wear a necklace like this!’ So there were different points that made them remember their family or their culture. The way they had their hair, or the colour of the skin or the dress or the jewellery. It was really good because they understood it. It is amazing how people here, because it is so mixed, they understand. They really understand other cultures. They understand that there are other cultures, they see different things, they are really open to that. So for me it was wonderful because it was really easy to get them into the theme. And each kid put their own knowledge of their family, or maybe just pure Australian even, so that was amazing.
As a contemporary jeweller in Chile, I would be interested in your thoughts as to how the Chilean and Australian jewellery scenes compare.
Now it is starting to be really different, because before it was just traditional jewellery, a lot of technique but, really fancy things, only gold because gold is... or diamonds, because the rest is not important. Like the craft part is starting to be a bit important. Three years ago to make jewellery, to make non-traditional jewellery was really good, but lately, like from last year, there is all this jewellery that comes from other countries really cheaply, silver plated. You wear it for a while and then when it goes out of fashion you just don’t use it, and you buy something else, much cheaper than a real jewel, like a one-off piece with a signature like an artwork. So that made it all go down because people say: ‘I can buy this art piece, but if I go somewhere else and buy this other thing that I like and it fits, and it is not as good as the other but when I get bored I can just throw it away, and it is not expensive so I might as well buy it. This I really find wonderful and I really appreciate it but I go for the other.’ That’s what’s happened lately. Here it is really different because I realise that you really appreciate the crafts. You really appreciate handmade things and people see a value in it. It is very difficult for one in Chile to do that: ‘Riverstones, yes, really creative, but you know a jewel has to have a real stone. This must be really cheap and you don’t look really elegant.’ It has to be someone that has a different way of seeing life or a person that is a crafts person or in the art world, making. So it is really different.
There is a group of jewellers, young jewellers and we are all trying to go on making our jewellery. It is not that we have to make it expensive, but there has to be a difference between disposable jewellery and a piece of art and that is the thing that we have to keep fighting for. You know, ‘Oh but this is too expensive, I can go to a corner store and buy something cheaper.’ Well, just go and buy it because this has a signature, it is a one-off piece, you won’t find anybody else wearing something like this, it is handmade and has a value. If you’re not interested then just go. Then sometimes you can’t live with it. You have to teach you have to do other things because you can’t live with it by itself. There is starting to be some new jewellery. Some people are interested, some people have no idea and just say the most… [pulls face and gags] ‘I can just go out and buy this on the street, I can buy this on the corner in the street and it is much cheaper.’ There is a lot of that. They find it never has the value. I try not to have really expensive things, but they are handmade one-offs, and even if it is a riverstone there was work in finding and setting it. There is the cost of the materials. You have to give it a price because it is an art piece, so I try to keep it as low as possible but an art-piece value. Otherwise you are giving it away and people think ‘It’s too cheap, it is no good.’ People are not ready for it yet. So we have to keep on. There are a lot of jewellers now in Chile, many people studying jewellery. I know many jewellers who go through the same thing, I’m not the only one, so sometimes you have to teach to keep up with life. We are a big group that are trying to keep that anyway because it is important to us.
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