AP-RO-POS: Five artists from Western Australia at Bilk

The Western Australian connection between Helena Bogucki, Christel van der Laan, Brenda Ridgewell, Claire Townsend and Robin Wells does not exert a common influence across the group. Each artist has woven a personal narrative into their work with inspiration found in a sense of place, the forces of nature and the remnants of memories left in collected found objects.

Bogucki graduated from Edith Cowan University in 2003. Her jewellery pieces are constructed narratives of history and place, and are fabricated using a wide variety of materials and metal-working techniques. As an archaeologist collects shards from a dig to construct a historical narrative, so does Bogucki collect objects such as old shell purses and stories from her field trips to explore Western Australia history. The shell purses she reinvents as jewellery pendants, engraving them with birds in the manner of scrimshaw and enamelling them to enhance the colour of the shells. The resulting objects could be interpreted as a cross-cultural reference to colonised Indigenous people. Her copper plaques of enamel work, with their weathered appearance, also seem mysterious – indecipherable signposts to a past history and place that remains unknown.

Van der Laan also uses found objects to create her jewellery, which is characterised by a geometric sense of design that brings order to unlikely combinations of materials. Van der Laan was born in the Netherlands and arrived in Australia in 1981. She lives and works in Perth. One of the most intriguing elements in Van der Laan's work is her use of ceramic honeycomb - a refractory material used for soldering on a jeweller's bench. This white material filled with tiny holes when filed, cut and sanded looks like old ivory. In two brooches in particular (the Aligned series) the honeycomb makes a soft, pleasingly coloured, textured contrast to the other metals and materials of wood, plastic, bone and silver. The ceramic honeycomb used as the main material in three pairs of earrings is surprisingly successful and looks like tiny seed cones.

Ridgewell has had an impressive career since her graduation in 1997 with an MA from RMIT, Melbourne. The artist has crafted a series of neckpieces, brooches and bracelets in sterling silver with accents of nine-carat gold. The brightness of the silver is the first impression of these works as well as their seemingly complicated construction. The wirelike silver strands are created into jewellery that is flexible, interactive and alive with energy and movement. These constructed forms, like the octagonal series of bracelets, define space in an architectural manner and impose their own presence rather than conforming to the contours of the body.

Townsend lives and works in the Perth Hills. Her jewellery makes reference to a historical period and a personal memory. Inspired by her grandmother's collection of old embroidery, the artist has beautifully recreated the tiny motifs of flowers and embroidered lace edges in her jewellery. As well as hand piercing and enamelling, Townsend uses a metal inlay technique (Ibsa) to delineate delicate gold and silver patterns of flower and bird motifs that illuminate dark metal surfaces. Townsend's mastery of these techniques creates pleasing patterns of contrasting surfaces and textures on pendants, rings and brooches.

Wells graduated from Curtin University in 1991. Since then she has established her jewellery practice in Melbourne. Her work, however, is informed by a rural upbringing in Western Australia that made her aware of the natural rhythms of nature - its fecundity and its devastation. In this exhibition, her work references bushfires and aspects of bird life using sterling silver. Of special note is her beautiful silver bushfire necklace where silver strands are woven together like twigs. Also striking is the brooch Aftermath, where the remnants of blackened burnt trees are rendered so graphically in oxidised silver that the work has a powerful impact despite its miniature size (7 centimetres by 4 centimetres).

This is an exhibition of some importance. It reflects the high quality and diversity of contemporary jewellery being made by Australian artists who, although they have a connection with Western Australia, are also defined by their recognition both nationwide and internationally.