Donna Brown: Gumbaynggirr Jeweller

Everywhen Artspace and The Indigenous Jewellery Project is proud to present a special NAIDOC Week exhibition: Donna Brown: Gumbaynggirr Jeweller, a new exhibition of jewellery by Nambucca Valley, mid-north coast NSW based artist Donna Brown (Gumbaynggirr).

Brown uses silver, copper, silk, enamel and emu feathers to create ethereal necklaces and chest pieces relating to her heritage and local Dreamings. Emu tracks, astronomy and fresh water/salt water imagery are strongly represented in her work.  

Donna Brown has exhibited nationally as a painter, printmaker, textile artist, illustrator and jeweller, and has several of her works held in public gallery collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and Art Gallery of New South Wales.  

Brown has been a workshop facilitator working for Aboriginal art centres such as Mornington Island Art Centre, Queensland, facilitating metal and felt jewellery workshops. 

This exhibition evolves from a project created by Everywhen co-director Emily McCulloch Childs, The Indigenous Jewellery Project (IJP), a national contemporary jewellery project working with Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander jewellers in workshops held on Country with UNSW lecturer Melinda Young, in order to develop a platform for Indigenous contemporary jewellery.

In 2021 IJP partnered with the Australian Design Centre, Create NSW and Jaanymili Bawrrungga, an Aboriginal organisation in Bawrrungga (Bowraville) NSW, in a workshop and professional development project, with works available at the ADC Object online store. A selection of these works are currently on display in the Object Space Window at Australian Design Centre.

Brown had previously been part of Shiny Shiny Blak Bling, a Melbourne based collective of Aboriginal jewellers who worked with jeweller Peter Eccles in developing silversmithing practice. This collective had been one of the inspirations for the creation of The Indigenous Jewellery Project. In a lovely circumstance of fate, IJP began working with one of the artists that had led to its creation, and from this well this current exhibition was born.

It explores Brown's Aboriginal heritage, silversmithing training and development working with IJP and subsequently remotely continuing the relationship between curator and artist, and brings the beauty and natural world from the artist's coastal and forest home to the Mornington Peninsula.