Jewellery is one of the most innovative practices in contemporary Korean art and design. The NGV’s recent acquisition of works by five leading artists presents Korean crafting traditions, materials and social ideas in the context of body adornment.
Jae Young Kim is one of South Korea’s most respected contemporary jewellers. With great skill she employs traditional Korean jewellery-making materials, including jade, with its associations with purity and immortality; bamboo, with its connotations of spirituality and resilience; amber, with its ambiance of antiquity; and silver for its connection to wealth. This homage to antiquity, combined with the use of auspicious iconography such as pairs of birds, plum blossoms and butterflies, conveys an admiration for the changing seasons and the natural world, evoking a profoundly Korean sensibility. In the two brooches Poems of the forest and birds; spring and autumn, 2016, the artist constructs lines, geometric shapes and symbols in a lyrical manner reminiscent of a gestural brush-and-ink painting.
Yi Jung Gyu is one of the first generation of Korean jewellery artists to gain recognition in Europe. Her work emphasises a connection between spiritualism and nature, using materials such as jade, amber, bamboo and rudraksha seeds, which are conventionally used for Buddhist prayer rosaries. In the work acquired by the NGV, Passed trace III, 2015, Yi has employed the traditional craft of using ox horn – known as hwagak – to imbue the work with the ambience of Myguo ritual, a shamanistic belief that precedes imported religions such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Christianity. This uniquely Korean belief infuses Yi’s works with spiritual, historical and symbolical associations and presents body adornment in new and unexpected ways.
With her striking body ornaments, Yun Sanghee has extended the traditional lacquer craft of ottchil beyond its conventional use for creating functional items. Through evocative sculptural forms, she highlights female subjectivity and presents performative statements against gender stereotypes. Yun’s jewellery designs are not superficial items of vanity or seduction, but, rather, graceful and organic embodiments of strength, almost like armour or weaponry. The wearer is consequently instilled with a sense of protection and power. Emblematic of this is the work Wing attack, 2006, which is worn on the forearm and takes the dramatically animated shape of a pair of wings in flight. ‘My jewelry makes the wearers get the strong existential feeling and sexual power from the mutual communication with others through wearing action,’ the artist says.1 Kevin Murray, ‘Sang Hee Yun – Beware lacquer’, Craft Unbound, https://www.craftunbound.net/texts/sang-hee-yunbeware-lacquer, accessed 10 Dec. 2024.
Choonsun Moon creates wearable undulating and twisting forms using playful contemporary materials. Her most recent works are inspired by variations of a geometric algorithm, which she utilises to cut series of gradually changing shapes out of coloured formica that are laced together to form jewellery, including Necklace, 2024. While using artificial materials, the artist simultaneously maintains reverence for a traditional minimalist Korean aesthetic.
Dongchun Lee employs everyday materials like steel and plastic thread to create forms inspired by human organs and the natural world. His works convey personal reflections on the cycle of life, such as growth, emotional change, death and the passage of time. In Shadow, 2016, delicately cut steel fronds embrace organ-shaped forms that have been precisely constructed by winding plastic thread. This sensual confluence of anatomical- and botanical-inspired shapes presents a harmonious spirituality between humans and nature.
Wayne Crothers is Senior Curator, Asian Art at the National Gallery of Victoria.
Note
Kevin Murray, ‘Sang Hee Yun – Beware lacquer’, Craft Unbound, https://www.craftunbound.net/texts/sang-hee-yunbeware-lacquer, accessed 10 Dec. 2024.