Jacqueline Mina at 75, The Scottish Gallery
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Jacqueline Mina at 75
The Scottish Gallery is delighted to be representing the eminent jeweller Jacqueline Mina during the Edinburgh International Festival, as part of The Scottish Gallery’s anniversary celebrating 175 years of art.
Jacqueline Mina has been an important senior figure amongst The Gallery’s representation of contemporary jewellers. Jacqueline had her first solo exhibition with The Gallery in 1993 - Jacqueline Mina - New Work in Platinum and Gold and The Gallery has continued to show her innovative work ever since. We are therefore delighted to be celebrating Jacqueline Mina’s continued development of her beautiful jewellery in her 75th year.
"Jacqueline’s jewellery is suffused with joy, the intense pleasure to be discovered from handling and wearing it flowing directly from the passion with which she invests it as she works with the materials she loves. It is also timeless, effortlessly and elegantly transcending the dictates of fleeting fashion."
Elizabeth Goring, 2017
Jacqueline Mina’s technical brilliance, allied with her strong artistic curiosity has resulted in a range of sensuous, understated work, which has a rare aesthetic presence in the field of contemporary gold jewellery. Her superb technical accomplishment in manipulating precious metals is combined with a fine, painterly eye. Sources of inspiration include Venetian Palazzo Fortuny with its textile drapes, devoré velvet with their patterns etched away. Of her work she states:
‘I aim to achieve an aesthetic result that obscures the technical rigours of its production. I am preoccupied mainly with the surfaces of precious metals (which I always affect in some way before construction begins) and with form - juxtaposing the play of light, reflection, lustre with characteristic angle, curve and line - inspired by an abstraction of nature and art, and particularly of the human form. I am intrigued, too, by the potential for dialogue between inner and outer planes, with random patterns imprisoned within strictly delineated edges and the visual tension created by the contrast and harmony of all these factors.’
A Lecturer at the Royal College of Art until 1994, Jacqueline has made a significant contribution to art education and has provided a great source of inspiration to her students; many of whom have become distinguished jewellers.
Winner of the Jerwood Applied Arts Prize for Jewellery in 2000 for ‘consistent innovation and a significant contribution to contemporary jewellery… for subverting and taking precious metal techniques to the extreme’, Mina also received an OBE for services to Art. In 2011,
the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths honoured Jacqueline’s career with the retrospective exhibition, Dialogues in Gold, which brought together a selection of her work spanning her entire career to date. It included pieces that are still regarded as seminal today; ground-breaking pieces for contemporary practice in precious metal. This was followed by Touching Gold, an exhibition which toured the UK.
Selected Public Collections:
National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Cooper–Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York
The Crafts Council, London
The Goldsmiths’ Company, London
Leeds Museums and Galleries
Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.
Jacqueline Mina at 75
The Scottish Gallery
16 Dundas Street
Edinburgh
EH3 6HZ
Exhibition run:
3 August – 2 September 2017
Image credits:
Textured Striptwist Necklace, Aleatoric Series, 2017, 18ct gold, platinum fusion inlay, £12,500
Textured and Pleated Brooch, 2014, 18ct gold, £2,560
Textured Wobbly Ring, Aleatoric Series, 2016, 18ct gold, platinum, diamonds. £2,100
Textured Wobbly Ring, Aleatoric Series, 2016, 18ct gold, platinum, diamonds. £1,995
Textured Wobbly Ring, Aleatoric Series, 2016, 18ct gold, platinum, diamonds. £2,700
Jacqueline Mina answers the Benchpeg Q&A here.
benchpeg.com/journal/jacqueline-mina
