I AM HERE Portable art, wearable objects, jewellery since the 1970s

Crafts Council Touring Exhibition I AM HERE arrives in London for a month-long Summer residency at The Hospital Club Gallery.

I AM HERE is an exhibition of contemporary jewellery features 98 pieces of studio jewellery by the most significant European makers from the last five decades. Starting with pieces from the most radical era of making in the 1970’s, I AM HERE tells a story of jewellery through the work held in the collections of Crafts Council, mima, Galerie Marzee, Gallery S O and Pangolin London.

The New Jewellery movement of the 1970s saw jewellers using non-precious materials and experimental design to highlight contemporary social and political issues. This shifted our idea of what jewellery could be and had a profound impact on future making both in the UK and beyond.

The exhibition includes work by Susanna Heron, one of the first jewellers to use Perspex in the early 1970s, a film of an arm piece made of ice by Naomi Filmer and a bejewelled fur-coated emperor penguin brooch by Dutch jeweller Felieke van der Leest.

Other jewellers include Gijs Bakker, David Bielander, Caroline Broadhead, Peter Chang, Gerda Flöckinger, Karl Fritsch, Rudolf Kocea, Otto Künzli, Roger Morris, Ted Noten, Lina Peterson, Dorothea Prühl, Mah Rana, Hans Stofer, Emmy van Leersum and David Watkins.

The exhibition also features a new piece a Tatty Devine's recent collection. The Crafts Council commissioned Tatty Devine to produce two new special jewellery editions that will be sold exclusively by the Crafts Council to celebrate I AM HERE.