Lisa Walker

Lisa Walker

Lisa Walker is one of the most widely recognised artists working in contemporary jewellery, developing a unique and unmistakable contemporary jewellery practice through her interrogation of the notion of archetypal beauty.

Her 2004 diploma exhibition on graduating from Munich's Academy of Fine Art heralded a startling new voice, one that come to have indelible impact not just within jewellery but the wider art world.

Lisa's vast body of work can be thought of as a career-length conversation with the question "What is jewellery?" So much of what we want to say about the medium and the discipline of jewellery can be found in Lisa's work: it is simultaneously wearable and unwearable, precious and non-precious, skilfully and not skilfully made; it is in dialogue with jewellery's past as well as current social and political issues and, sometimes, it strives to be meaningless.

Kate Rhodes + Nella Themelios

Lisa's works are often challenging. They are at the very least audacious [and] at times head-scratchingly 'on no, she's gone too far this time'.

Tim Walker

Lisa Walker

After studying Craft and Design at the Otago Polytech Art School in Dunedin New Zealand in the late 1980s, Lisa Walker traveled and worked in Australia, Europe, Great Britain and Asia, establishing her own workshop in central Australia in 1990-91. From 1995-2001 she studied under Otto Künzli at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, living and working in the city from 2002-09.

Lisa Walker's work was the subject of the career retrospective I want to go to my bedroom but I can't be bothered at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in 2018, at Melbourne's RMIT Design Hub in 2019 (restaged as She wants to go to her bedroom but she can't be bothered and accompanied by an award-winning book), at Museum Villa Stuck in Munich in 2020 and Te Uru Gallery Auckland in 2021.

Walker has worked extensively with Chicks on Speed over may years, including the major exhibition Chicks on Speed and Lisa Walker present Touch me baby, I'm Bodycentric! A Multimodalplosion! at City Gallery, Wellington in 2013.

In 2010, Walker was awarded the Francoise van den Bosch Award, with a signifcant survey exhibition, Wearable, presented the following year in Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen, Holland. She also won the Arts Laureate Award of the New Zealand Arts Foundation in 2015. Her work is in the collections of major museums around the world, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Auckland Museum, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich and the Dowse Museum, Wellington. Lisa Walker lives and works in Wellington, New Zealand. 

My jewellery exists to decorate the body or clothing in whichever way I deem appropriate. It is a means to comment on life and art. It makes my living.

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Featured exhibitions

  • KARL & LISA

    KARL & LISA

    Karl Fritsch and Lisa Walker have been at the forefront of contemporary jewellery for over 20 years, constantly pushing and questioning what jewellery is and can be. They met while...

    KARL & LISA

    Karl Fritsch and Lisa Walker have been at the forefront of contemporary jewellery for over 20 years, constantly pushing and questioning what jewellery is and can be. They met while...

  • SEEP

    SEEP

    Trying to understand Walker’s inclusive process and thinking, I experience both hope and exhaustion. SO much is possible, and so MUCH is possible! But what I find most important is...

    SEEP

    Trying to understand Walker’s inclusive process and thinking, I experience both hope and exhaustion. SO much is possible, and so MUCH is possible! But what I find most important is...