Marian Hosking
Hosking's practice focuses upon the embodiment of the personal meaning of place in intimate objects, with particular reference to place as landscape. Her work is characterised by an extraordinary depth of research into the history, languages and processes of jewellery and silversmithing: the domain of the intimate object. The potential for the miniature to act as a 'souvenir' or paradigm for such ideas has led to it becoming the primary mode employed by Hosking.
The low-fi technology of the hand-made is an essential component of Hosking's work. She works with casting techniques alongside fine saw-piercing and riveting in her silverwork, often spending weeks on a single piece. Earthy patinas are built up on the surface of the silver with heat and chemical processes, each bearing its own distinctive character. More recent works have seen Hosking embrace the particularities of the original materials; mainly Australian timbers, small sections of which she frames, either literally with silver or figuratively with the small scale of jewellery.
Somewhere along a continuum from representation (mimesis) to abstraction, Hosking takes control of the image and idea, the way a photographer or filmmaker controls access to a larger picture. Even something that appears to be completely mimetic, such as a Buchan fern brooch, actually selects out a portion for us to see. Because of the tendency of the human mind to complete a (familiar) object, "a partial obhect can... stand in for something that is not - or is no longer - present and available.
Marjorie Simon
Marian Hosking
I avoid a horizon; my brooches are always a small fragment of something larger.
Marian Hosking has interpreted the Australian landscape through silver jewellery and vessel work for more than 50 years. Her undergraduate studies were completed in Melbourne in 1969, after which she travelled to California, London, Barcelona and Germany, where she studied at the Fachhochschule für Gestaltung, Pforzheim and continued living and working through the early 1970s. She returned to Australia in the middle of the decade, setting up the metals workshop and lecturing at Charles Sturt University, then co-founding Melbourne's Workshop 3000 with Su san Cohn in 1981.
Hosking has been a dedicated and influential teacher and advocate for Australian art and craft, and had held positions as Head of the Gold and Silversmithing Departments at both RMIT and Monash Universities in Melbourne, from which she retired in 2014.
In 2003, Hosking was named among the first 'Living Treasures' of Australian craft, on which occasion a major traveling exhibition and monograph were launched. In 2012, Hosking was awarded the prestigious Colin & Cicely Rigg Contemporary Design Award at the National Gallery of Victoria, for 'Clearing', a group work which explored the theme of containment and the Australian landscape and introduced found timber for the first time in her work.
Marian Hosking lives and works on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria.
View works
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'Bearded Heath' brooch
Regular price $380.00 AUDRegular priceSale price $380.00 AUD -
'Black Swan' brooch
Regular price $315.00 AUDRegular priceSale price $315.00 AUD -
'Black Swan' cut out brooch
Regular price $315.00 AUDRegular priceSale price $315.00 AUD -
'Black Swan' cut out brooch
Regular price $315.00 AUDRegular priceSale price $315.00 AUD -
Sold out'Black Wattle' brooch
Regular price $740.00 AUDRegular priceSale price $740.00 AUDSold out -
Sold out'Black Wattle' brooch
Regular price $740.00 AUDRegular priceSale price $740.00 AUDSold out -
'Casuarina' brooch
Regular price $925.00 AUDRegular priceSale price $925.00 AUD -
'Celery Top Pine' earrings
Regular price $275.00 AUDRegular priceSale price $275.00 AUD
Featured exhibitions
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Recent Works: Weathered and Worn
Marian Hosking, one of Australia's most respected metalsmiths, presents a new body of work that draws on recent travels; in particular, the experience of Victorian coastal environments. Hosking recently moved...
Recent Works: Weathered and Worn
Marian Hosking, one of Australia's most respected metalsmiths, presents a new body of work that draws on recent travels; in particular, the experience of Victorian coastal environments. Hosking recently moved...