UNLEASHED - Artist Profile: Alicia Allan
Alicia Allan
Meanjin (Brisbane)
Contemporary jeweller Alicia Allan works primarily in sterling silver, copper, enamel, and gold from her home studio in Meanjin (Brisbane). After leaving an academic research career to focus on her artistic practice in 2020, Allan has built her creative career, exhibiting her work for the first time in 2022. With a background in psychology and research, her perspective is greatly informed by how we perceive and relate to the natural world.
Allan's Unruly Garden series celebrates the contradictions of gardening - our desire to cultivate and control nature, while nature insists on growing according to its unruly rhythms. Meticulously crafted in precious metals, the pieces in this series immortalise ornamental and weedy plants that have demanded the artist's attention by straining against the boundaries of her garden. In rendering these botanical subjects, Allan invites viewers to consider which plants we choose to celebrate versus contain, and how presenting nature in precious metal both venerates and possesses it for human purposes. The series explores our enduring compulsion to adorn ourselves with nature's beauty while seeking to manage the natural world.
Image credits:
Alicia Allan (2024). Unruly Garden, Silver. Dimensions variable. Photographed by Alicia Allan.
