Students from Idar-Oberstein at Legnica Jewellery Festival Silver in Poland

Work by Katharina Dettar

From 1st May to 10th of June the City of Legnica organizes a jewellery and silver festival together with Galeria Legnica. This year, our students had a strong appearance trough solo and group exhibitions.

Sam Laddin (M.F.A. stud.) was selected for the publication of Amberif 2018.

Astonish presented their Holy Rock exhibition at the Legnica Culture Center. ASTONISH is a collective of seven female artists and explorers fascinated by making and designing contemporary jewellery and objects. They call themselves a group of fresh, young, jewellery artists from Trier University of Applied Sciences, Campus Idar-Oberstein, Department of Gemstones and Jewellery who want to show the world their very different approaches towards gemstone. They all were driven by different ways of dealing, playing and struggling with this unique material. This fascination fueled all the creative activities of young artists, including those that resulted in this exhibition with the significant title The Holy Rock. Part of Astonish are our Graduates Eva Burton (M.F.A. 2018), Gabriela Cohn(M.F.A. 2016), Pia Groh (M.F.A. 2017), Helen Habtay (M.F.A. 2018), Sharareh Agaei (M.F.A. 2017), Julia Obermaier (B.F.A. 2016) and Stephanie Morawetz (M.F.A. 2016).

Katharina Dettar (M.A. 2014) showed her work COMPARATIVE STUDIES at Galeria Szutki. The Artist says about her work:

A gold ring may weigh about 2,1 grams. Based on the data and information provided by the Dolaucothi Gold Mines in Wales the average quantity of ore to get 2,1 grams of 24ct gold is of about 140 kilograms of quartzite. This quartzite has an high amount of iron in it where the gold dust finds itself located. In order to get the ore you need to extract 1400 kilograms of shale rock, therefore being the final numbers 1540 kilograms of spoil for a 2,1 gram ring of gold.

To obtain a small amount of gold, tons of rock are dug up and sprinkled with diluted cyanide, which separates the gold from the rock. Some of the largest mines move up to half million tons of earth a day, leaching the poison into rivers and lakes.

2,1 grams is a visual metaphor that illustrates the huge disparity between a gold ring and the amount of material needed to create it.