Belinda Newick 

Maker of Jewellery and Objects | Curator | Educator

Newick is a contemporary jeweller whose work explores cultural hybridity, place and social engagement. She maintains a diverse practice as a studio based jeweller, and as an independent curator and writer. 

Since 2007, Newick has been an educator at Melbourne Polytechnic in the Jewellery and Object Design Program.

Program link here

In 2022, Newick completed a Master of Creative Arts, Melbourne Polytechnic. She has a BA in Art (Jewellery and 3D design) from Curtin University WA and completed a Design Associateship in the Metal Design Studio Jamfactory 1998-2000.  

She spent six years in South Australia at JamFactory Contemporary Craft and Design, Gray Street Workshop and Zu design jewellery + objects, before settling in Melbourne in 2005. 

Newick has been the recipient of two grants international grants, an Asialink Residency in Sri Lanka 2004 and in Kerala, India 2001. She has exhibited in Asia, New Zealand and the USA and is represented in galleries nationally. 

Winner of 2019 Lynne Kosky Award for Contemporary Jewellery, Victorian Craft Awards. 

Newick is the curator of Island Welcome, which has been touring nationally since 2017.

 

Artist Statement

My exhibition work is drawn by the close and far landscapes of my lived experience. Cultural hybridity and social practice inform the marks and words I inscribe upon my artworks. The place and forms locate in the hand and on the body, to inhabit spaces of connection. 

Academic Work

Presenter
IOTA21 Futuring Craft Conference

Value Chains- Reset, JMGA Jewellery Conference redistributed (Jewellers and Metalsmiths Group of Australia)

AAANZ21.LIVE 2021 AAANZ Conference
The Power Institute and Department of Art History
University of Sydney | Art Association of Australia and New Zealand

Writing Links

Radiant Pavilion
radiantpavilion.com.au

Garland
garlandmag.com/article/island-welcome

Island Welcome
islandwelcome.com.au

Tabula Asiae, Antecedents
Artist Statement, 2021

My ancestry threads a path from Europe to Ceylon in the mid- 1600’s. 

A time of western colonialist invasion and expansion, appropriation, a time of genetic blending. 

Since travels to this resplendent isle through the 2000’s, reconnections and an Asialink residency, I have reflected the teardrop form and shape in my jewellery and hand-held objects. The shape is a connection to my past, it is a memento to my Mum and, after surviving the Tsunami, a memory of the collective grief of loss of lives. It is the form of ancient, Acheulean stone tools, of our prehistoric ancestors. 

Sri Lanka, referred by all its names, is a maelstrom. The civil war, the tsunami, the impacts of European defined territories and conquests. For these works I have traced the maps of my Dutch burgher ancestors overlaid with the maps of the losses of lives in each region from the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. This event was so powerful it made the earth wobble on its axis, permanently altering the regional map and effecting the Earth’s rotation.

My perspective of this map, my place, my lived experience. The parallels, the marks made in ink, in silver, in spice, a reminder of the indefinable impacts, by nature, by humankind, powerful, powerless, constantly re-drawn.