STORY BY MAHMOOD FAZAL, PHOTOS BY CHRIS TURNER

K

atherine Bowman’s art is disguised as jewellery, “My practice is quite open. I don't just make jewellery. I also do sculptural work.” She makes artefacts set with the spirit of those who adorn them.

“I've always made things. When I was about 15 or 16. I started working with wire,” she says, while thinking of how she came to be a leading jeweller.

Katherine’s first degree was a Bachelor of Arts with a Double Major in Fine Art History from the University of Melbourne. “Bachelor of Arts sort of introduced me to jewellery, notions of adornment, the value of intention and materials in creating meaning. The important lessons were to really think about why I'm doing what I'm doing and where it goes out into the world.”

Since Katherine moved to the region, her approach has shifted. The quieter pace helps Katherine stop and look at things. “I think seeking out what is best for me, what is the best way to live, how to live well with what you have, and what surrounds you.”

The shift to the country from the city has placed her closer to nature, acutely aware of the drifting seasons and a post-covid shift in the people around her, “Everyone is craving, not intimacy, but a sense of being seen and heard.”

Katherine is aware of the energy around her and applies it in her practice. “I just feel that, you know, if you look at something that is plastic, next to something that is perhaps a crystal next to something that is wood, there's a different energy between each of them.

For thousands of years adornment has informed people’s spiritual and cultural values, by being carried on their bodies. Each piece, reflecting the person, leaves behind a story.

It’s why Katherine’s jewellery is always unique. “My practice is very much about making one and then making another one - not making 10. it's about the handmade and about making something that will last, not something that is fashionable, something that will be a daily lived experience.”

Her ideas begin with a careful interrogation of her practice. “I suppose for a long time, what I've investigated is, if you have like a sheet of brass, or a sheet of gold, or a sheet of copper, what does the maker myself have to do to transform that material?”

For Katherine, it’s a personal transmission. ”You go through technical things, but you also go through an investment of your thought processes, the way you live your life manifests in the materials and objects that you make.”

Katherine recalls a quote from the Vietnamese filmmaker, Trinh T. Minh-ha: ‘"May my story be beautiful and unwind like a long thread…," she recites as she begins her story. A story that stays inexhaustible within its own limits.

Aware of the stigma of jewellery, bound up in class and shallow materialism, Katherine challenges us to seek out its essence.

“How do I put energy and meaning into material so that it is something that is not just a commodity, but it is something that an individual will choose to wear every single day, or to protect themselves when they go out into the world? Or to remind themselves of love? Or being loved? Of heritage or religion?”

She believes the world has too much stuff. Before adding, “And I'm a maker of stuff. So I want my stuff to have some relevance.”

Katherine Bowman

katherinebowman.com.au

info@katherinebowman.com.au