Satellite: Exhibition in the Museum Mineralogia starting 26.10.2023
Accompanying the ‘Moon Impact’ exhibition is the show ‘satellite’. A solo show of contemporary art jewellery by Stephen Bottomley, MPhil RCA.
Bottomley was born in 1967, two years before the Apollo 11 moon landing and the space age has remained a constant and steady influence on his craft through digital manufacture, CAD design, as well as the wider cultural influence of science fiction. Jewellery collections are inspired by the history of jewellery as an art form from the Ancient and Classical world to modern times.
Since 2015 he has been experimenting with a range of manmade materials, which include the following:
Egyptian faience: a low-fire mixture of ceramic materials containing clay, sand, colorants, frits, and soluble salts traces
Copper Metal Foam: developed for use by NASA in their rocket engines and heat exchangers, enamelled
Diamond dust: an industrial tool making by product
Sintered alloys: materials made from the 3D powder metallurgy process known as sintering. Including Aluminium alloys
As the ‘Moon Impact’ exhibition explores the history of the universe through the lenses of geology and mineralogy, my work in ‘Satellite” aims to respond to the diversification of materials in the 20th and 21st Centuries, inspired by Space age technologies and innovations, while reflecting on the impact of the synthetic materials on the new Anthropocene.
Bio:
Professor Stephen Bottomley is the Head of the School of Design at Glasgow School of Art. Previously he led the schools of Jewellery and Fashion and Textiles at Birmingham City University (2017-2021) and department of Jewellery and Silversmithing at Edinburgh College of Art (2008-17), as well as teaching at a range of other Universities for over thirty years.
A contemporary jeweller, his work is in the National Museums of Scotland, the British Museum and the Cominelli Foundation Collection, Italy. His work combines the ancient techniques of jewellery making with evolving and contemporary materials and technologies.
His work references the rhythm and patterns found in oriental motifs and mathematical geometry through layers of embossed repetitive patterns and textures and is made from vitreous enamel combined with metals and other industrial materials.
Bottomley has curated exhibitions and inter-disciplinary projects in Chicago, Lake Garda, Beijing, Shanghai and Munich. A past chairman of the Association for Contemporary Jewellery (2005-07) he is a member of the Associazione Gioiello Contemporaneo and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths since 2017.
