Mari Funaki: 1950-2005

The Art Gallery of Western Australia pauses to remember Mari Funaki, one of Australia's most significant jewellers and artists... more

Mari Funaki, works 1992 - 2009

27 June - 18 October 2009

Mari Funaki

Bracelet 7

2006

heat-coloured mild steel

6.8 x 11.1x 13cm

Collection: Sandy Geyer

Photo Jeremy Dillon

Mari Funaki is one of Australia's leading jewellers. This exhibition celebrates her considerable achievements between 1992 and the present day.

Her first major show in a state gallery, it includes nearly fifty works and will be the first time Perth audiences have seen her work in such depth. Many of these are new works produced especially for this show.

The exhibition will focus on rings, containers and bracelets. These forms have been the core of her practice, the foundation of her intricate material experimentations. Her sheer intensity of focus has seen her hone these forms into objects of extreme power and beauty. Funaki's is no simple beauty, however. It is sharp, complicated. There is always a sense of danger in her work, as the spindly legs of her insect-like containers support unlikely, unwieldy torsos, and as her rings and bracelets cultivate miniature monoliths that play with scale and weight in fascinating ways.

This exhibition will frame these unique objects in such a way as to acknowledge Funaki's ability to work with space and matter to form entrancing works that adorn the imagination in the same they adorn the body.

The Art Gallery of Western Australia

is proud to be a partner of the

City of Perth Winter Arts Season