>>Robert Baines: Well really
I'm a product of RMIT University.
I went to RMIT in the School of Art
and did the Gold and Silversmithing program
and from there, from doing that
program
my knowledge and my enquiry about the goldsmith, the historical goldsmith and
the possible applications in a contemporary
context has been my main consideration.
I came into archaeometallurgy because I was interested in the
processes of the ancient goldsmiths. Now this is very complex
gold manufacture
and that intricacy and complexity really captivated me and drew me into a sort of
a scholarship in that domain.
My research in that archaeometallurgy
was to select pieces from the Greek and Roman collection
mainly at The Metropolitan Museum, the most complex pieces and then
to really deconstruct them.
This research was really the testing of the theories of manufacture of that age,
the technology, and so to make authentic copies requires one
to use the known
methodologies of that era. It's no use applying modern
processes to make something ancient
and this is important for the Museum because there is a fundamental
question, I think, and this is what I've taken up and applied in
narratives with fictitious jewellery
and the fundamental question is is it important
to have an authentic material cultural history?
The things that we see in museums, is it important that
they're authentic?
Now I believe that they are, but
but I think this questionable of authenticity
is a fun thing that you can play with.
>>KELLY GELLATLY: I think Robert's
an extraordinary
jeweller because he makes things that are
based in that practice but so other than jewellery in a way
I think one of the things that really appeals to me is that there's a true
perversity in the work. Robert has a quite extraordinary and wicked sense of humour
and that's always at play
in works that are deeply embedded in
history and his incredible technical mastery
but it's always tweaked in some way.
So gold is powder coated red
so that notion of
preciousness and all of
those associations with wealth and snobbery and
hierarchy of medium and materials are always turned on its head,
but they're done with such exquisite beauty
and always with technical mastery at the fore.
So he brings all of those things together in quite and extraordinary way.
>>ROBERT BAINES: It gave me a vantage point to make
pieces that are authentic and yet somehow they are subverted
and the subversion
that I made in pieces was by the inclusion of red.
Now red is an impediment
to that orthodoxy of authentification.
So in the Entropy of Red
there is the trumpet, that's at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London,
and the second piece was the crown which
I made all of wire.
The crown is structurally
very fine, but it's more of a spacial thing and I like this sort of
binary condition of matter and space.
The third piece, which was a very important piece for me with this new
wire construction work, was the table.
It was really like a sacrificial table
but it was a vehicle for me to make some sort of stupendous wire structure
in silver wire and what I wanted to build were
wire structures that had
a geometry
had a structural potential
that I could make these
large things
and so the table was expression of that.
>>KELLY GELLATLY: I think one of the nicest things about
putting Robert's work on display in a gallery context is they always
inspire a sense of wonder in the viewer.
They're quite fantastical in a way
and while they may be
candelabra or crowns or
they may have a basis in a functional object
they really push that and
there's a sense
of the magical or
fairy stories or possibilities in them
and that's quite transfixing for an audience I think they
take people to places that they may not necessarily go in their everyday lives.