Marian Ripoll
Our wonderful Jewellery and Metal selection for Collect 2024 spans from intricate jewellery to bold statement pieces with architectural influences. Featuring Makers Donna Brennan, Marian Ripoll, Mara Irsara, Faye Hall and Vicki Ambery-Smith.
Donna Brennan is a Fine Art Jeweller and Photographer. Her extensive training across the expanded field of the arts has conferred a cross-disciplinary approach to photography and wearable sculpture, crafting a narrative from image to object which blurs the dichotomy between Fine Art and Applied Art.
Donna’s work for Collect is titled Gifted, the work is an ode to the gift which is nature. Gifted also alludes to a special talent or ability which, when considered in its broadest sense, once could apply to one’s nearest and dearest, and indeed is often what is being honoured when gifting jewellery.
Donna has explored work from her archive through the lens of ‘Now and Then’. Re-working her cluster cocktail rings, she has re-appraised former work by re-framing them in billowing gold ‘gifting’ ribbons and contextualised them with reeded botanical images set in Solander boxes.
Marian Ripoll is a designer-maker and architect based in London. Her work is an ongoing exploration of space, through the movement of lines and the play of light. The wire sculptures she creates can be worn or simply be displayed on a wall, casting shadows, which become part of the artwork.
Mara Irsara trained as an architect and her designs reflect geometric primordial shapes, the fine jewellery turning into bold expressions which illuminate the wearer. Outspoken thoughts and witty thinking make creativity spin and thrill and grow. All pieces are unique and handmade in her London atelier.
Mara’s Collect pieces stand on their own, small wearable sculptures, injected with the freedom of movement, which come to lie when worn and interacted with. They achieve sophistication through playfulness and signal their presence to the wearer. They are ‘arrogant pieces’ expressing and demanding communication between maker and wearer.
Faye Hall is a designer maker based in West Yorkshire and lives with her husband, two young children and dog. Hall has over 13 years experience creating tactile fabrics for high end clients across both fashion and interior textile applications. Hall's practice now affords her the chance to work between both cloth and jewellery which allows her to work at both large and intimate scaled of work. Hall's practice is currently anchored to exploring the joining of material qualities and colour combinations through embroidery and placement.
Vicki Ambery-Smith’s architectural jewellery and objects continually delight and entertain, earning her an international reputation. During her acclaimed career, she has developed into a style which draws on influences as diverse as ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy to contemporary Europe and America. The follies exhibited at Collect, are all based on real places chosen by Vicki for a group of small boxes for their quirky British eccentricity. After close observation, she manipulates the dimensions, edits details to essentials and uses a trompe l’oeil effect to capture the essence of a building.
