Legnica Jewellery Festival

The 41st edition of Legnica SILVER Festival will take place in May and will once again bring together artists and lovers of contemporary artistic jewellery. The event will culminate on 28-29.05.2021. This year's programme will include exhibitions planned, prepared and ... cancelled due to the pandemic last year. This time - ready for different scenarios - we are preparing the event in a hybrid form, enabling participation regardless of the current epidemiological situation. Legnica will host 15 solo and group exhibitions, cross-sectional and problem-based, presenting various examples of artistic jewellery by contemporary artists from Poland, France, Belgium, Lithuania, Germany, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Great Britain and China, to name a few.

The most important element of Legnica SILVER Festival is the International Jewellery Competition, which features numerous works by artists from several dozen countries every year. Each year the Competition has a different leitmotif, referring to significant, universal problems and issues of the contemporary world and contemporary people, seen in the social, cultural, sociological or anthropological perspective of everyday life. In the catastrophic year of 2020, the Competition participants had many reasons to creatively reflect on the condition of contemporary man, and the starting point for these reflections became the leading theme: STILL HUMAN?

The works submitted to the competition show a wide spectrum of interpretations of the competition leitmotif, sometimes representing very different approaches to the issue. The artists referred to, among other things, ecological themes - showing the destructive influence of human activity on the natural environment, as well as shared their reflections on the consequences of technological development. There are also many personal themes – about intimacy, relationships, and jewellery quoting the authors' very personal stories. The manufacturing techniques and materials used by the artists were also varied. Apart from traditional golden and silver objects, submitted jewellery is made of plexiglas, wood, human hair, everyday objects or bioplastics, such as PLA created from corn.

On 19-22 February, the debate of the Competition Jury took place. An international group of Jurors, consisting of: Caroline Broadhead (United Kingdom),

Magdalena Kwiatkiewicz (Poland), Georg Dobler (Germany), Darijus Gerlikas (Lithuania) and Sławomir Fijałkowski (Poland) evaluated 357 works by 186 artists from 35 countries, including: Germany, Italy, Taiwan, Mexico and New Zealand. Works by 44 artists were selected for the post-competition exhibition. The list of qualified participants is available on our website. Works sent to the Competition, but not qualified by the jury will go to the exhibition of "the rejected", named Holownia after the traditional place of presentation (the Old Town Hall).

The announcement of the Competition results and the award ceremony will take place on 29 May (Saturday). The event will also be available on our communication channels.

The programme of Legnica SILVER Festival includes 15 exhibitions of artistic jewellery and accompanying events. As part of the series of solo exhibitions called About the Authors, an extensive cross-sectional show of works by Professor Andrzej Szadkowski, one of the most important Polish jewellery artists, founder of the Department of Jewellery at the Faculty of Textile and Fashion at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, will be organised. We will also learn about the following authors: Marion Delarue and Delphine Perrache. The former’s work focuses on the problem of illusion, imitation and the state of transformation, generating collections such as: Agate Jewellery and Parrot Admirers. Dephine Perrache, on the other hand, is known for her fascination with spatiality and three-dimensional compositions, and treats her jewellery like small architectural works.

As every year, young artists, students of art and design, will also have a chance to present their work. This time Legnica will host shows prepared by students and professors from two Silver Schools: The Metal and Jewellery Studio S+M+L_ XL (Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia), under the direction of Prof. Karol Weisslechner, and the Jewellery and Metal Department at the Academy of Fine Arts (Shanghai University, China), led by Prof. Shannon Guo. The debut exhibitions will include jewellery by Luiza Mężyńska and Justyna Kowalczyk - young graduates of Władysław Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź.

A retrospective look at the Polish artistic jewellery of the 1980s and 1990s will be provided by the exhibition Handmade. Polish Silver Art 1979-1997, presenting the silverwork collections of the Copper Museum in Legnica - co-organiser of the exhibition. It will bring closer the specific character and development of Polish gold- and silversmithery of that period through the prism of the National Review of Goldsmithing Forms SILVER. It will be accompanied by a presentation of works by Marek Huculak, a member of the Association of Jewellery Artists, who died in 2020.

Another point in the SILVER schedule is the sixth edition of the international Mechanorganic / Mechanic-organic project, the idea of which is to create jewellery based on objects received from other members of the project. The Legnica edition will be held under the motto Extranalities, and will feature works by the initiators - Herman Hermsen and Timothy Information Limited – as well as invited artists: Peter Vermandere, Felieke van der Leest, Sofia Björkman, Denise Reytan, Sara Gackowska.

During the Festival Legnica will also host exhibitions organised within the framework of:

International Competition of Artistic Jewellery PRESENTATIONS 2019, held under the motto of Prosthetics. The competition is organised by the Association of Goldsmithing Artists;

The 24th International Competition for the Design of Jewellery with Amber AMBERIF DESIGN AWARD 2020, under the theme Ultimate Beauty, which is held annually as part of the International Amber and Jewellery Fair Amberif in Gdańsk; and Eco-sight Competition, organised in 2020 by the International Baltic Jewellery Fair in Vilnius.

The festival will be accompanied by a number of fringe events, which will be conducted in a form adequate to the current epidemiological situation and with respect to all safety regulations. You are welcome to follow our website and social media, where we share news and information about the event. ■

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