3 x Collider brooches, Silicon, Aluminium, Enamel, Steel, 2026
The ‘Collider’ brooches reflects a moment of impact between heritage metalworking and modern Space Age synthetic materials and techniques.
A silicon disc, scientifically grown in a laboratory for the electronics industry, is bombarded with particles of vitreous enamel and fired to 900 degrees Celsius. Vitreous enamel was invented for use with metal, not man-made silicon, where the fired particles fuse and bond, or resist and spring away, leaving the starry marks of their passage and flight. (Bottomley)
Exhibition information / context:
Minerals, are not inert, but vital and articulate. Shaped over time by elemental forces, they embody transformation. This exhibition approaches matter not solely as geological phenomena, but as vibrant agents that can provoke, inspire, influence, transform and direct creative processes. Between light and dark, solid and liquid, stable and unstable, matter operates as a mediator, forms through which meaning, symbolic, and metaphysical metamorphoses unfold. They speak in rhythms of transformation, growth, shimmer, and resistance.
The exhibition unfolds across four cabinets on the museum’s ground floor. Each zone invites you to engage in a dialogue with matter focussing on light, form, growth, and energy, pairing mineral specimens from the collection with contemporary jewellery and metal work objects that respond, resonate, or interrupt. The show invites visitors into a multisensory dialogue between matter formations and their enacted contemporary artistic (re)interpretations.
Zone 1 ‘Energetics’
In this zone the vitality of matter is investigated through function and force. Crystals are essential to modern technologies from semiconductors to timekeeping. Quartz generates an electric charge under mechanical stress, making it a cornerstone of modern electronics. Silicon is the backbone of modern computing, its crystalline structure enabling the flow and control of electrons that power our digital world. In this zone, crystals are not passive components, but explored as active collaborators of which energetic potentials can be reinterpreted beyond utility. Artists' works create a dialogue of how crystals shape our technological realities while inviting new narratives of energy, resonance, and transformation.
(Booons & Zhang)
Artists in this Zone: Stephen Bottomley, Lin Cheung, Katharina Dettar, Adi Toch, Grace Wilson, Marina Ito, Lili Barglowska, Nicholas Yiannarakis, Syd Kendall
