Opening | Blanche Tilden—ripple effect: a 25 year survey

This survey of Melbourne-based jeweller and maker Blanche Tilden reveals her remarkable and critically acclaimed practice, celebrated for its transformation of everyday and industrial materials into aesthetically refined, conceptually rich wearable objects.

Tilden has a unique approach to her materials, in particular glass, which she explores both as a material for jewellery making and deploys as a metaphor for the connections between making, industry, the wearable object and the body. Her fascination with mechanical devices, fuelled by a desire to understand how things work, continually inspires her work.

This first comprehensive survey of Tilden’s career includes historical and contemporary works loaned from numerous public and private collections. Tilden has reinterpreted previous work to create new forms that expand on her preoccupations with value, mechanical movement, and industrial and architectural uses of glass, translating something of the macro immensity of the built and material world to the intimacy of the jewellery object.

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Curator: Jason Smith

A Geelong Gallery touring exhibition

Image: Blanche Tilden, ‘Yom Hashoah ritual sash (bandolier)’ 2007. Glass, 925 silver and nylon coated stainless steel cable. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Funaki, Melbourne. Photographer: Rhiannon Slatter. © Blanche Tilden