1 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Grapes and Masks
(1/2)
Diptych, 2022
Sterling silver, quartz, pearls, bone, print
250 x 320mm
$2000 (diptych) | ENQUIRE
2 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Melon and Masks
(1/2)
Diptych, 2022
Sterling silver, quartz, mixed pearls, print
250 x 320mm
$2,000 (diptych) | ENQUIRE
3 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Blue
2023
Sterling silver, goldplated, pearls, blue agate, shells, print
515 x 620mm
$1380 | SOLD
4 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Apple News
2023
Sterling silver, coral, print on transparent paper, print
540 x 465 mm
$1100 | ENQUIRE
5 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Shepherdess
2023
Sterling silver, red jasper, antique pearls, carnelian, print
540 x 425mm
$1200 | ENQUIRE
6 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Sapphire Harvest
2023
Sterling silver, 40 carats of sapphires, granite, quartz geode, print
730 x 575mm
$2300 | ENQUIRE
7 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Highland Pearls
2023
Sterling silver, green argillite, greenstone, pearls, print
510 x 420mm
$2050 | ENQUIRE
8 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
River Gems
2023
Sterling silver, argillite, cubic zirconia, diamonds, emerald, print
820 x 570mm
$1350 | ENQUIRE
9 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Stone & Bone
2023
Sterling, agate, bone, print
225 x 180mm
$640 | SOLD
10 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
The Hunter
2023
Sterling silver, red agate, print
270 x 325mm
$680 | ENQUIRE
11 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Arcady
2023
Sterling silver, quartz, shell, print
160 x 120mm
$600 | ENQUIRE
12 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Lich’im
2023
Sterling silver, pink tourmaline, lichen, print
95 x 12mm
$470 | SOLD
13 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Ratty Bloom
2023
Sterling silver, skull, cubic zirconia, tourmaline, print
95 x 12mm
$590 | ENQUIRE
14 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Fossilised Shell Stone Pendant
2023
Fossilized shell stone, oxidised stg silver, fine silver
135 x 95 x 5.5mm, 500mm chain
$1790 | ENQUIRE
15 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Black Pakohe Pendant
2023
Pakohe/argillite, handmade sterling silver chain, fine silver
170 x 80 x 6mm
$1600 | ENQUIRE
16 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Green Pakohe Pendant
2023
Pakohe/argillite, handmade oxidised sterling silver chain, fine silver
125 x 85 x 5mm
$1320 | ENQUIRE
17 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Calico Jasper Pendant
2023
Calico Jasper, handmade oxidised sterling silver chain, fine silver
140 x 80 x 10mm, 500mm chain
$2100 | ENQUIRE
18 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Installation view
$POA | ENQUIRE
19 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Installation view
$POA | ENQUIRE
20 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Installation view
$POA | ENQUIRE
21 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Installation view
$POA | ENQUIRE
22 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Installation view
$POA | ENQUIRE
23 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Installation view
$POA | ENQUIRE
24 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Installation view
$POA | ENQUIRE
25 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Installation view
$POA | ENQUIRE
26 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Installation view
$POA | ENQUIRE
27 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Installation view
$POA | ENQUIRE
28 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Pakohe pendants
2023
Pakohe (argillite), silver, cord
$695 | ENQUIRE
29 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Calico jasper and green pakohe pendants
2023
Pakohe (argillite), silver, cord
$695 | ENQUIRE
30 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Large Basalt Wall piece
2023
Basalt, sterling silver, fine silver, ribbon
220 x 18 x 8.5mm
$2300 | ENQUIRE
31 / 31
Elfi Spiewack
Un/familiarities
Large Basalt Wall piece
2023
Basalt, sterling silver, fine silver, ribbon
220 x 18 x 8.5mm
$2300 | ENQUIRE
Un/familiarities
Elfi Spiewack
20 Sep – 14 Oct 2023
They are mysterious, these works. Incongruous conflations of familiarity and strangeness, depth-less image and three-dimensional object, art and jewellery.
The settings are the timeworn, colour-skewed reproductions of eighteenth and nineteenth century Romantic paintings with their dramatic cloudscapes, nostalgic pastoralism and suggestions of intimacy, a canon of familiar images ejected from their place above the mantelpiece or beside the bed to gather dust and disfiguring light in the $10 bin of the op shop or garage sale. Into these, jeweller Elfi Spiewack embeds set gems, slivered bone and polished stone, using the materials and techniques of fine jewellery to add a startling vitality, disrupting assumptions of medium, value and aesthetic norms.
The banality of an alpine scene of Haast Pass is interjected by a slab of pounamu, immutable in its presence, as if reclaiming its West Coast origins. In the foreground, a drift of diamond-like zirconia appears to have been washed up in the river.
Jean-Francois Millet’s Shepherdess with her Flock (1863) is looped across by a scattering of semi-precious Carnelian beads, a sliver of jasper, a string of pearls suggestive of tears and prayerful subservience.
Another painting by Millet: The Gleaner, 1857. A piece of granite seemingly extruded from the hillscape hangs oppressively over the bent body of a farmworker; amongst the wheat stalks lies 40 carats of scattered sapphires, a nod to the exploitative industry by which precious stones are mined by the poorest to grace the bodies of the wealthiest…
…The choice of materials is subtle, dictated by the mood, colour and narrative of the imagery, while violating the norms of both art and jewellery. If the value of art is determined by the reputation of the artist, and the value of jewellery is dictated by the materials used, here the ‘art’, discoloured and discarded, is pierced with precious metals and the natural beauty of agate, jasper, basalt and shell, set according to the highest standards of the jeweller’s craft.
Spiewack has been this way before. In her Osseous series of 2015, she integrated animal bones and synthetic hair into wearable jewellery. In Splendour Moot, Adornment Re-Framed (2017-now), she adorned portraits from the Baroque and Victorian periods with finely crafted brooches and necklaces.
But the paradoxes of this exhibition also evoke the everyday strangenesses of Covid times when, as she says, the old story was disturbed, nothing made sense: “It was a new reality.”
Sally Blundell, 2023