Katherine Hubble
(b. 1992, Perth, Western Australia. Lives and works in Melbourne)

Katherine Hubble is a jeweller who investigates new ways of looking at traditional forms, creating wearable pieces with contemporary plastics, industrial processes and traditional gold and silversmithing techniques. Drawing upon research into historical jewellery motifs and the cultural significance of body ornamentation, she re-imagines conventional pearl jewellery through synthetic materials to question what is considered prized or treasurable.

For Melbourne Now Hubble presents a collection of plastic lustre brooches, designed and produced between 2020 and 2022, which expand upon her series Twenty-First Century Pearls. Across history and cultures, seashells have inspired artists and craftspeople, who have long used them to adorn the human body. Archaeological evidence dates the earliest use of shell beads back some 80,000 to 100,000 years. As part of her research process, Hubble collected seashells along the Victorian and Western Australian coastlines, including the Neotrigonia margaritacea (also known as the common brooch shell), which belongs to a genus of saltwater clams originally thought extinct until living specimens were discovered in waters off the Tasmanian coast in 1802. This series reinterprets pearl cultivation and re-imagines shell jewellery for the contemporary moment, creating ‘gems’ with a combination of polypropylene, thermoplastic, vinyl and acrylic. These luminous and iridescent shapes are made through vacuum forming – an industrial manufacturing method where a plastic sheet is heated to a pliable temperature, moulded into a specific design and trimmed to create a usually commercial object, then inset in silver and steel. Hubble’s striking pieces are bright and joyous, capturing the wonder of their natural inspirations, while challenging what can be considered a precious material resource.

Hubble recently completed a Master of Fine Art at RMIT University, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) in 2017 and won the Emily Hope Award for a Figurative Work. Her graduate pieces were selected for the 2017 Marzee International Graduate Show in the Netherlands. She won the Wolf Wennrich Award for Excellence in Gold and Silversmithing in 2016.