
An Unreliable Guidebook to Jewellery by Lisa Walker
- Publisher
- Perimeter Editions / RMIT Design Hub Gallery
- Year
- 2021
- ISBN
- 978-1-922545-03-9
- Specifications
- Softcover with flaps, section-sewn lay-flat bind
13 x 19 cm
600 pages
Edition of 750
Second Edition
Printed by Wilco Art Books, Netherlands
Editors: Kate Rhodes and Nella Themelios
Design: Žiga Testen and Kim Mumm Hansen
Commissioned photography: Layla Cluer
Numerals design: Matter of Sorts (Vincent Chan)
Edited by Kate Rhodes and Nella Themelios, this expanded second edition of An Unreliable Guidebook to Jewellery by Lisa Walker further explores how the work of the internationally celebrated New Zealand jeweller can be framed by the career-long provocation 'What is jewellery?'. Originally published to accompany the retrospective exhibition Lisa Walker: She wants to go to her bedroom but she can't be bothered at RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Melbourne, in early 2019, the release of the book's extended new edition – co-published by RMIT Design Hub Gallery and Perimeter Editions – coincides with the final iteration of the exhibition at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery in Auckland in June 2021.
Foregrounding the act of asking questions and the pleasure and importance of the 'as yet understood', the book includes a proliferation of new works, texts, materials and documentation from the touring exhibition's recent installations at CODA Museum (Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, 2019) and Villa Stuck (Munich, Germany, 2019).
At once systematic and malleable in their structure, the narratives that emerge within this volume offer an open-ended reflection on Walker's practice and output, moving across different time periods, veering off on tangents, but returning to the many concerns of the field in which she has so firmly embedded herself.
Widely regarded as one of New Zealand's most influential contemporary jewellers, Lisa Walker (b. 1967) has received countless New Zealand and international awards, and her work has been acquired for major public and private collections both in New Zealand and internationally.