Edinburgh College of Art Design School Research Groups

█raft, LINES, Scottish Documentary Institute and the Department of Jewellery and Silversmithing present:

A Robert Baines Lecture

Bogus or Real : Jewellery and the Capture of Human Drama

Art-jewellery cannot be completely free of context. Every material or process has an embedded material cultural history. The goldsmith has an inescapable history but this is not a burden, conundrum or impediment to make an original statement. New jewellery can be invented and illustrated with fictitious evidence. Historic or contemporary renderings of the human drama are available for subversion using the jewellery artifact to convey contextual meanings. Jewellery is the vehicle.

Robert Baines Biograph

Living Treasure: Master of Australian Craft, goldsmith and emeritus professor at RMIT University, Robert Baines has maintained a national and international profile with exhibitions, awards, lectures and publications for more than forty years. His works are in prestigious public collections in Great Britain, Germany, France, Poland, USA, New Zealand, and Australia. In the research areas of artist goldsmithing and archaeometallurgy he received a Winston Churchill Study grant (1979) and this was followed by Senior Fulbright and Senior Andrew Mellon Conservation Fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY. In 2004 he had an exhibition of his research, Entdecker der antiken Goldschmiedetechnik, at the prestigious Staatliche Antikensammlungen, München, Germany.

In Germany he has received the Bayerischer Staatpreis gold medal (2005); Friedrich Becker Preis (2008), and Herbert Hofmann Preis(2013). Most recent books published are Bracelet-Java-la-Grande (2006) and More Amazing Schmuck Stories by Robert Baines (2009) and Fabulous Follies Frauds and Fakes (2013).

Robert Baines will have work at the Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh on exhibition from November 2nd 2016 http://www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/exhibitions

Robert Baines- Bogus or Real : Jewellery and the Capture of Human Drama