Barbara Heath: Jeweller to the Lost
In most forms of visual art, public interest ebbs and flows. Judging by the success of international craft shows, the hand crafted object is the current flavour of the month. In April, the 24th Annual Smithsonian Craft Show at the National Building Museum, DC, drew crowds from across America vying for the first look at contemporary design in object d’art. The toast of the Smithsonian show was the announcement of a PBS television documentary planned for 2007 which will trace the evolution of American crafts in an ambitious three-part series. Ken Trapp, former curator of the Renwick Gallery, explains the public interest,
some dismiss the hand crafted object as an anachronism, a nostalgic throwback to an earlier and supposedly simpler and happier time. But for many more, the handcrafted object is an authentic experience that is personalized, individualized, and humanized1
Trapp’s words resonate in the reception of a jewellery exhibition much closer to home, ‘Barbara Heath: Jeweler to the Lost’ held recently at the Queensland Art Gallery.
Often in an attempt to argue the significance of craft, critics treat objects like jewellery on a par with fine art forms such as painting and sculpture. This is a regrettable approach. Not because jewellery is somehow inferior to those other art forms, rather, it ignores jewellery’s specific associations with the body and factors of consumption such as wealth, status and sexuality. Theorising about jewellery as fine art militates against the likelihood of contemporary jewellery actually being worn. Barbara Heath’s jewellery cannot be divorced from the body, or more specifically, the wearer. As Amelia Gundelach points out in her catalogue essay, ‘(Heath’s) primary concern remains the … jewels