Currently on display at Hurstville Museum & Gallery is the exhibition USE. This exhibition features exquisitely crafted contemporary jewellery and small objects by seventeen artists from the Jewellers and Metalsmiths Group of Australia (Queensland Chapter), toured by Museums & Galleries Queensland.
Helen Bird is one of the artists featured in USE. Helen creates interactive and small-scale sculptural works that explore the ways in which art objects may function as tools. She has studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours (First Class) at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. Helen also has a Bachelor of Fine Art in Jewellery and Small Objects and has studied Art History and Museological Studies.
Helen’s piece Trace Series 3 (2015) has been constructed with detailed materials and techniques to create obscure and delicate forms. Inspired by the ballpoint pen, each device houses a steel ball-bearing and is primarily designed to serve as a mark-making tool. There is a video in the USE exhibition space which presents the objects situated within their larger installation grouping. Viewers can be seen engaging in the purposeful act of guiding the abstract pieces across a paper ground to leave documentation of their navigations in ink.
USE is on exhibition at Hurstville Museum & Gallery until 25 October 2020.
References:
‘Helen Bird’, USE: Contemporary jewellery and objects catalogue, pg. 11.
Hurstville Museum & Gallery 