Swords into Ploughshares: Knives into Jewels

Saturday 22 February 2025
 – Wednesday 12 March 2025
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Swords into Ploughshares: Knives into Jewels Symposium
3pm – 4.30pm Friday 21st February
Reid Lecture Theatre
Free but ticketed – Book via Eventbrite

Exhibition Preview
4.30pm – 6.30pm Friday 21st February
Free but ticketed – Book via Eventbrite

Opening Hours: Mon to Sat 10am – 4.30pm
Sun – Closed

 

Access to the exhibition is through the main entrance of the Reid Building, which has step free access, and double width doors.

The Reid Gallery is located on the ground floor.

For Accessibility Information click here

Swords into Ploughshares: Knives into Jewels
22 February – 12 March 2025
Reid Gallery

Concern about knife crime and its effect on communities was the catalyst for this exhibition. These new artworks create positive outcomes from what might be thought of as negative materials. This touring exhibition, hosted by GSA School of Design, is curated by Norman Cherry and Dauvit Alexander. The curators invited thirty-five international jewellery and metals artists to create new bodies of work by refashioning, repurposing, adapting or otherwise transforming knives which had been surrendered to UK police.

The exhibiting artists have been selected for their excellence of practice and ability to comment on and react to social and personal situations through their work. Jewellery and small objects are ideal vehicles to engage with complex issues, having a personal, portable, talismanic potential. This is not conventional “jewellery as product” as seen on the high street, but “jewellery as art object”. The exhibition shows work with a narrative potential: political and social significance is a major feature of this project.

The curators have deliberately chosen a mix of established and emerging artists from an international constituency. Some of the artists expressed interest in participating because they already work with steel (the majority of knives are made from steel) and/or other non-precious materials, some because they relish the opportunity to do so. All of them have committed to the project because they believe in the power of their art to change lives, and wish to be involved because they have a genuine interest in the subject.

Exhibiting Artists include Dauvit Alexander, Boris Bally, Petra Bishai, Stephen Bottomley, Tim Carson, Norman Cherry, Jens Clausen, Rachael Colley, Eimear Conyard, Bob Coogan, Rosie Deegan, Jeff Durber, Cristina Filipe, Anna Gordon, Hermann Hermson, Arabel Lebrusan, Jorge Manilla, Patrick McMillan, Nanna Mellund, Eliana Negroni, Rohan Nicol, Ted Noten, Coilin O’Dubhail, Komelia Okim, Peter Parkinson, Annelisse Pfeifer, Jo Pond, Elizabeth Shaw, Rebecca Skeels, Risto Tali, and Fred Truus.

Swords into Ploughshares: Knives into Jewels is a touring exhibition curated by Norman Cherry and Dauvit Alexander.

Norman Cherry has an international reputation as a jewellery artist, curator of exhibitions, and writer. A former senior academic in British universities, he has works in public collections such as The British Museum, Dundee Museums, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, the National Museums of Scotland and The Mint Museum, North Carolina, USA. He has previously curated touring exhibitions of new narrative jewellery such as “Transplantation” and “The Other Mountain”, both of which showed the work of international jewellers from Germany, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and China to international audiences.

Dauvit Alexander is Senior Lecturer at the BCU School of Jewellery He is  experienced in delivering socially-engaged projects. His jewellery uses unconventional combinations of materials such as corroded steel and iron with precious metals and gemstones. He has work in public collections, including the British Museum and Goldsmiths’ Hall and has recently co-curated the socially-engaged “{Queer}+{Metals}” exhibition as well as “No Laughing Matter”, an exhibition of work looking at the criminalizing of the use of Nitrous Oxide.

Image: Dressed to the Knives by Boris Bally, 2022; Photography by Luke Unsworth, 2023.