What Remains?
Jess Dare
12 Nov – 07 Dec 2019 The National, Christchurch, New Zealand
A fallen blossom from a tree, wilting on the soil below. Flowers collected on a journey and pressed between the pages of a notebook. A garden tie dangling from a trellis, once training a thriving beanstalk. A nut, a pod, a twig, a branch, curiosities gifted by my son, collected, kept and remade in brass, a memory to revisit time and again. Traces of what was once, but is no longer.
This exhibition is about family, memory, collecting, connection, remembering and preserving. I am interested in what happens to things through their life, my life. How plants grow and wither and reference our own mortality. How we remember, what we remember. The things we collect, keep and record. My Grandfather, Dean Hosking kept journals, recording daily rainfall, plants that he bought, notes on how to maintain his garden tools, the ordinary everyday, practical, methodical and all meticulously penned in his flowing looped cursive.
Jess Dare, 2019
Jess Dare, born Adelaide, South Australia 1982, lives and works in Adelaide.
Contemporary jeweller Jess Dare completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts specialising in Jewellery at the Adelaide Centre for the Arts TAFEsa in 2006. Practicing flame working for over 10 years, having been taught by local and international glass artists, glass now forms an integral part of her practice. Jess joined Gray Street Workshop (Est.1985) as an access tenant in 2007 and in 2010 became a partner of the workshop, joining Catherine Truman and Sue Lorraine in continuing its legacy and shaping its future.
Jess exhibits nationally and internationally and is represented in major national collections including The National Gallery of Australia, The National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the National Glass Collection.
Jess has undertaken international residencies researching floral culture in Thailand (2014) and China (2015).
In 2016/17 she worked closely with Professor Richard Johnson creating a permanent memorial in Martin Place, Sydney, symbolising the sea of flowers laid by thousands of people following the December 2014 Martin Place siege.
Photography: Grant Hancock
A PDF version of the catalogue is available here or a hard copy version can be posted to you for AUD $10 by sending an email through contacts page.