Su san Cohn | Pre­sent­ing the 3^rd Engel­horn Jew­ellery Lecture

Su san Cohn is an artist with mul­ti­ple per­son­al­i­ties work­ing across the art-craft-design divide using a vari­ety of media from jew­ellery to mul­ti­ple pro­duc­tion, instal­la­tion, pho­tog­ra­phy, video, and per­for­mance. Liv­ing in Mel­bourne Aus­tralia, she has been mak­ing work for over 39 years, exhibit­ing exten­sive­ly in Aus­tralia and over­seas. She trained in gold and sil­ver­smithing at RMIT Uni­ver­si­ty (Mel­bourne), holds a Doc­tor of Phi­los­o­phy in Fine Art The­o­ry and is direc­tor of Work­shop 3000, a Mel­bourne access met­al work­shop. Cohn is rep­re­sent­ed by Anna Schwartz Gallery, with her most recent solo exhi­bi­tion Pieces of Peace, June 2023.

Cohn’s broad under­stand­ing of design and mak­ing has also enabled her to work as a design­er for Alessi, the Ital­ian table­ware com­pa­ny as the cura­tor of the inter­na­tion­al exhi­bi­tion Unex­pect­ed Plea­sures – the Art and Design of Con­tem­po­rary Jew­ellery, com­mis­sioned by the Design Muse­um, Lon­don and as editor/​writer for the accom­pa­ny­ing book pub­lished by Riz­zoli Inter­na­tion­al Pub­li­ca­tions,
New York. In 2017 Cohn was award­ed the Aus­tralia Coun­cil Artist award.

I explore the role of jew­ellery in our social, polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al con­texts, focus­ing on how jew­ellery talks for peo­ple and how it relates to the body. My inter­ests lie in how our pos­ses­sions become invest­ed with mul­ti­ple val­ues and sym­bol­ic mean­ings. My research-based and col­lab­o­ra­tive process includes work­ing with dif­fer­ent skilled artists, film­mak­ers, sci­en­tists, and indus­tri­al­ists to chan­nel new ways of work­ing and tech­nolo­gies into my designs.

The Engel­horn Jew­el­ry Lec­ture is ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of Christof and Ursu­la Engelhorn.

Cohn Bios:
Su san Cohn
41 odd years addict­ed to JEW­ELLERY
39 years direc­tor WORK­SHOP 3000, Mel­bourne
Exhi­bi­tion, pro­duc­tion, com­mis­sion work
jew­ellery, table­ware, instal­la­tion, per­for­mance
curat­ing, writ­ing, col­lab­o­rat­ing
Dubi­ous char­ac­ter who likes dubi­ous tech­niques
always work­ing, always exper­i­ment­ing
Plays with bound­aries, nev­er gives up
too much expe­ri­ence, many mis­takes, some heart­breaks
a few sur­pris­es, some suc­cess­es
end­less fun.

Lec­ture in Eng­lish
Free entrance
Pinakothek der Mod­erne
Ernst von Siemens-Audi­to­ri­um
March 03, 2024. 11 a.m.

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