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Time in Us: Jana Machatová and Peter Machata; The Communication Potential of Contemporary Jewellery

Publication

Abstract

"Time in Us" represents the creative output of Slovak artists who are gradually approaching middle age and belong with the so-called "Generation of Husák's children". The jewellery objects designed by Jana and Petr Machata are accompanied by photographs made by Petr Ančic.

Each one of this trio of artists reflects their childhood lived against a prefab housing skyline. The selection of some fifty pieces of jewellery that maps out two decades of the artists' work documents the power of jewellery to carry a message.

For the viewers, each of the exhibited objects becomes an entrance ticket to universal time, in which they can recurrently experience the crucial stories of their lives - the search of oneself, maturation, love, relationship mishaps, periods of painful losses and new hopes. Abstract elements mingle with citations of images found in family albums and social-life magazines.

The possibility of observing what is substantial is offered through the raster of a prefab building as well as folk art ornament. The depth of feelings and bonds between people are reflected in the body landscape of today's individuals, as well as in fragments of the bodies of the Virgin and Christ in the Pieta composition.