Lisa Walker – Jeweller

Lisa Walker – jewellery star

By: Liesbeth den Besten

To celebrate Jewellery’s 20th anniversary, a festive central exhibition will feature the work of Lisa Walker (1967). Her jewellery is odd, humorous and has an enormous freedom.

The New Zealand artist has been active for more than 20 years. In her jewellery she uses remnants of our consumers’ society, and waste from her own workshop or that of others. She buys materials and things at (digital) markets, such as a stack of brochures and postcards from a trip to Europe, and toys and knickknacks that were apparently too beautiful to just throw away.

Lisa Walker finds beauty in everyday things. She also embroiders and likes to (re)use textiles in her work, while paint and glue are used liberally. Sometimes people think she is just doing anything but that is definitely not the case. She makes choices, she shapes and she responds to other people’s art and developments in the world. Her jewellery is in the world’s most important museum collections. And private individuals also enjoy buying and wearing her work. The exhibition on Jewellery features jewellery by Walker from private collections in the Netherlands and Belgium.

In 2019, I wrote an article about Lisa Walker for US magazine Metalsmith, entitled ‘Lisa Walker’s disruptive jewellery’. The article is largely based on e-mail interviews I had with her. In the article’s introduction, I describe her work as:

“Lisa Walker has been called an iconoclast, a provocateur and (unofficially) a tinkerer and a crook”.

In the article, I elaborate on her motivations, working methods and sources of inspiration.
(click the images below to enlarge and read or click this link to open the pdf in a new tab)

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