Tessa Blazey and Alexi Freeman: Interstellar Gown
Event Dates: Friday 5 August – Saturday 20 August
Venue: Craft Victoria, Gallery 3 and enCOUNTER, 31 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
Artist Talks: Saturday 6 August, 2pm
I'll Show You My Craft If You Show Me Yours is a collaborative project designed to bring together people from different crafts to share processes, materials, and ideas.
Jeweller Tessa Blazey and fashion designer Alexi Freeman turn their attention to the heavens, collaborating on a new work for Craft Victoria entitled Interstellar Gown. Fit for a sci-fi goddess to traverse the celestial sphere, the gown is constructed from approximately 600 metres of gold plated chain and 6000 jump rings meticulously embellished into a galactic flapper formation. This work evokes unseen galaxies, star clusters, constellations and nebula, suggestive of an imagined artefact; a remnant of a visitation by a cosmic being.
Interstellar Gown is the second major work for this duo. Their first work, Neo Lace Gown, is a finalist in the Powerhouse Museum International Lace Award (29 July 2011 – April 2012).
Acknowledgements
Interns:
Caroline Dickinson
Emilia Bartuccelli
Belinda Repsysthom
Nora Omar
Yallen Flahive
Arun Chauhan
Sponsor: Koodak Jewellers Supplies
Artist Biographies
ALEXI + TESSA is a collaboration between jewellery designer Tessa Blazey and fashion designer Alexi Freeman. Drawn together by their mutual love of geometric shapes and cross-disciplinary practice, together they have produced 3 seasonal ranges (SS 10/11, AW11, SS 11/12) and a major work, Neo Lace Gown, which has been named as a finalist in the Powerhouse Museum International Lace Award (2011 – winner yet to be announced). Their next project will be for Craft Victoria as part of the I'll Show You My Craft If You Show Me Yours exhibition series in August 2011.
Tessa Blazey
Tessa Blazey completed an Advanced Diploma in Engineering Technology (Jewellery, NMIT, 2008), and won the Studio Ingot Best Design Award at the jewellery graduate exhibition. Prior to this Blazey completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours, Interior Design, RMIT, 1999), and at the graduate exhibition won the Carr Design Award. Blazey also completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (majoring in Sculpture, RMIT, 1995). Blazey has participated in various jewellery exhibitions including Sneak at Craft Victoria (2009), Fabrication- a solo show at Pieces of Eight, (2009), Chronique Scandaleuse, (Glitzern, 2009), Contemporary Australian Silver & Metalwork Exhibition (Buda, Castlemaine, 2009), and The Good Ship Glitzern, (Glitzern, 2009). She has also exhibited extensively in numerous sculptural exhibitions including solo shows: I'm Special, (First Floor Gallery, 1997), Take Me I'm Yours, (Hoogeschool voor de Kunsten, Utrecht Netherlands, 1994). And group shows:, Mayonnaise, (First Floor Gallery, 2000), The Home Show, (Linden Gallery, 1998), The Transparent Urban Interior, (Platform, 1996) and Signs of Life, (RMIT Faculty Gallery, 1993). Blazey has most recently been published in The Melbourne Design Guide 2009–2011. Since 2002, Blazey has been a lecturer and tutor in Interior Design at RMIT. Blazey is represented by Pieces of Eight Gallery.
www.tessablazey.com.au
Alexi Freeman
Alexi Freeman trained in Fine Art at the University of Tasmania, majoring in printmaking and sculpture (1996-2004). Freeman's art practice heavily referenced fashion concepts and aesthetics, producing limited edition prints and garments before receiving the Manufacturing Design Fund from Arts Tasmania (2005) enabling the genesis of the ALEXI FREEMAN fashion label in 2006. Currently based in Melbourne, his collections for women incorporate elements of hand drawn & printed textiles worked into drape and juxtaposed with tailoring. Freeman has since completed 15 seasons of ready-to-wear, selling to an ever growing list of boutiques and private clients in Australia, New Zealand, USA & Europe. Freeman's collections are a graphic tribute to the world in which we live and his raison d'être is to lure fashion into bed with art, catalyse the rise of understated avant-garde and popularise the notion of urban couture, all the while empowering and paying homage to the modern woman.
www.alexifreeman.com
