Funaki, Melbourne

17th November to 23 December 2023

Since becoming a parent my children and their influence in my life is visible in my practice. Watching them grow, learn and understand, witnessing how they are in the world, their unconditional love, insatiable curiosity and awe is inspiring. I am not sure if it’s because of being a parent or just happenstance of aging but my children often remind me of my own childhood and spark memories long put aside.

Up until I was 15 my grandparents lived opposite a cemetery, we used to walk through the cemetery to get to the playground on the other side. I was terrified of the cracked graves, believing that the dead had escaped but I also remember even from a young age being fascinated by what was left on the graves, flowers dried and crackly, trinkets, vases, shrivelled blooms barely clinging to their stems, faded plastic and threadbare fabric. There was love in those remnants resting on graves and for as long as I can remember I have sought out these minute details and been enthralled by flowers.

My work is about my connection with materials and process. It’s repetitive, labour intensive, it’s how I think, write and make, I go over it, again and again to stay in that moment, to really understand it, to come to terms with it. Labour intensive making is my therapeutic balm and a conscious act of un-forgetting.

For over a decade I have used the potent symbolism of flowers, they are alive for the briefest of times, they are a bittersweet reminder of our own life’s transience. The flowers in this exhibition are much more experiential, they convey very personal stories and invite contemplation.

While my making is usually controlled and measured, these works about loss, have taken me to a place of discomfort and rawness, leaving joins exposed and imperfect, showing solder and not over working the metal or sealing it with a gloss powder coat. The rawness in the making reflecting the emotion in the work itself.

As an adult, love and loss are forever present, a part of life, the accumulation of memories, moments, experiences, relationships. The things I make are like an unbound diary, bearing witness to daily thoughts as they come and go, washing over me, tethering me, connecting me to family, people I love and moments in time. A Handful of flowers… ponders how people communicate and express love and loss through the act of giving and receiving flowers. It is about love and grief, of processing events in life, of living with loss, it’s about family, contemplative, joyful and melancholy.

Jess Dare

Photography by Grant Hancock

Catalogue available from Gallery Funaki, Melbourne

It’s not enough for me to just collect things, I find myself having to reinforce the stories, the moments, the memories around the objects I collect by physically remaking them. This series of Keepsakes are mementoes from the past year, Banskia leaves from a bouquet I bought by the roadside, gumnuts collected by my son on a walk, a jacaranda pod I picked up whilst lulling my baby daughter to sleep in her pram, a spray of gumnuts my mum picked up after a particularly windy night.

At the heart of this collection is a large neckpiece titled Witch’s fingernails. My son and I sat down beneath a Bushy Yate tree, it’s shadow littered with long cone shaped opercula (flower caps). As a child I used to slide them on to my fingertips and pretend I had long witch’s fingernails, I showed my son how I use to play with them, he quickly started to gather them up and link them together, one inside the other before long he had connected them into a large circle, a necklace.

Collecting. Making. Remembering…

Photography by Pippy Mount

An exhibition about memory, family, moments shared and treasured, of exchanges with my children, of growing, learning and sleepless musings.

These works are inspired by collecting fallen treasures with my son, of slow meandering walks with my daughter, of my grandparent’s flowerbeds.

Innocent, reflective, tender, brief, quiet moments.

Through making, I process the world around me and soothe the fear of forgetting. I make new treasures to keep and hold, long after the moment has passed. Mementos to tether me to the memory.

“As I roll up to a crab apple tree, my baby asleep in the pram, bruised petals below my feet, sticking to the wheels like damp confetti, I hope she hasn't noticed the pram has stopped moving. I notice the blossoms, the silhouettes, the shadows, the dappled light, the contrast against the blue sky as I stand in the shade of the crab apple tree…. she sleeps and I dream.”

Exhibition at Jamfactory, Adelaide 3rd March to 3rd April 2022

Photography by Grant Hancock

Frangipani Lei was created for an exhibition at Zu Design titled “Beresford White Inspired”. An exhibition celebrating the life of a very talented maker. Works by Beresford White were shown side by side with works by artists in response to his work, life, passion, ingenuity and craft.

My response was this Frangipani Lei, symbolic, sentimental, personal and full of love. The day Marcus proposed we were in Bali. Our 9 month old son unwittingly clutched a small black box. The box contained a ring made by Beresford White. That night we had dinner on the beach and were gifted Frangipani leis. I hung the leis in our room. For 2 weeks they slowly wilted, collapsed and browned as their scent got sweeter. A reminder of a special day, how fleeting moments in life are and how they should be cherished and remembered.

This Frangipani lei, in weighty brass, partly wilting, beginning to collapse, the softening petals just starting to brown takes me right back to that moment. A day I’ll forever treasure as is the ring on my finger, made by Beresford White.

Photography by Grant Hancock

Fallen, wilted, pressed, dried remnants, mementos found, collected and kept... What Remains?

A fallen blossom from a tree, wilting on the soil below. Flowers collected on a journey and pressed between the pages of a notebook. A garden tie dangling from a trellis, once training a thriving beanstalk. A nut, a pod, a twig, a branch, curiosities gifted by my son, collected, kept and remade in brass, a memory to revisit time and again. Traces of what was once, but is no longer.

This exhibition is about family, memory, collecting, connection, remembering and preserving. I am interested in what happens to things through their life, my life. How plants grow and wither and reference our own mortality. How we remember, what we remember. The things we collect, keep and record. My Grandfather, Dean Hosking kept journals, recording daily rainfall, plants that he bought, notes on how to maintain his garden tools, the ordinary everyday, practical, methodical and all meticulously penned in his flowing looped cursive.

Exhibited at The National, Christchurch, NZ

11 November to 7 December 2019

Slipping away:

Each time you recall a memory you are recreating it, subconsciously changing it, embellishing or reducing it. This wattle spray slowly wilting and distorting, represents various states of transition, fading, slipping from consciousness, impermanence, and the inability to hold on to a memory.

Planted:

After my grandfather, passed away we found piles of venetian blinds stacked, resting against the shed wall. Everything was meticulously ordered in the garden shed and whilst they were orderly the blinds seemed out of place. Grandpa was resourceful, frugal, meticulous and clever, he would cut the aluminium strips into tags to label all the plants he was propagating or had just planted.

Ties:

Hanging from the trellis after the broad beans have long been removed. Securing a young tree unable yet to stand on its own. Tethered to the stems of new plants with a label reminding me how often to water and the name of my latest acquisition, sometimes bent and gnarled, trampled in to the soil. A reminder of what was once there or sometimes what is still to come. Made from brass sheet and drawn wire, pressed, soldered, bent, twisted, powder coated, sanded and repeated over and over. This collection of ties represents my relationship with the garden, the practice of gardening and working with your hands passed down through generations. Repetition. Tradition.

Making Time:

With curious wonder I keep the gumnuts, billy buttons, sticks, seedpods, things my son picks up and hands to me like treasures. Making time is a series exploring making permanent and impermanent, crafting in brass the essence of these little treasures, an exchange between mother and son. A treasure to keep and hold, long after the moment has gone and the memory has faded.

To view the glass works from this exhibition please click here

Making Time is currently touring in the exhibition Made/Worn by The Australian Design Centre. To read more about this exhibition click here

Offering of Welcome:

My experience with garlands has always been incredibly positive, joyful and humbling. In 2014 I did an Asialink residency in Bangkok, Thailand researching the traditional craft of Phuang Malai (Flower Garlands). When I was presented with a Phuang Malai I felt welcomed and honoured, I felt a part of a tradition. The flowers were picked and strung together in an intricate design just for me. I was moved by the gesture, the craft and the tradition.

This garland is an idea, a concept, a notion, a gesture, an offering of welcome, acceptance and my wish for change. Composed of iconic Australian native plants like the Eucalypt, Flowering Gum, Wattle, Correa, Boronia, this garland’s materiality of heavy brass symbolising permanency, stability and solidarity. Whilst the colour white represents peace, innocence and hope.

Read more about this exhibition at http://islandwelcome.com.au

Materials: Powder coated brass, stainless steel cable and sterling silver

2017

Photography by Grant Hancock

In 2014 I undertook a residency in Bangkok, researching the floral culture of Thailand, and in particular Phuang Malai (Floral Garlands);  a traditional craft which relies upon intricate construction techniques to achieve a high degree of patterning. Phuang Malai carry specific meanings, they are made for a variety of occasions and they are ephemeral. For me flowers are a symbol of the transient nature of life and memory. I am fascinated by ways different cultures celebrate and pay respect with flowers. This collection of works entitled Offerings, explore the core construction principles of Phuang Malai; deconstruction, reconstruction, and proportion with reference to aspects of beauty, respect, honour and merit giving.

Photography by Grant Hancock

During a residency in Thailand I began photographing decaying Phuang Malai (floral garlands) on the streets of Bangkok. Perhaps dropped, perhaps offered to a spirit house or temple, perhaps strung on a car rear vision mirror, its intended destination unknown to me but I was intrigued by the brilliant coloured ribbons and decaying, browning petals, flattened by passing traffic, shrivelling in the heat. Did these objects reach their intended destination?

Someone took care to string these delicate petals and crown flowers together perhaps for a gift, decoration or perhaps an offering or giving merit. I marvelled at the journey these objects had taken and what brought them to this place. Making links with the way that flowers are used in Australia for celebration and mourning. For me flowers are a symbol of the transient nature of life.

Using the colour white to reference decay and strands of cotton slowly undoing themselves hastening the passage of time, alluding to the disintegration and sun bleaching of the once brightly coloured ribbons which may have tethered these Phuang Malai to a shrine.

After a Phuang Malai is offered it will eventually decay leaving behind only the act of offering, these enduring objects represent this passage. 

Photography by Grant Hancock

After a floral garland is offered it will eventually decay leaving behind only the act of offering, these enduring garlands made in brass, flattened, wilting, surface decaying, represent this passage, this state of impermanence… 

Photography by Grant Hancock