BJW 2022 JURY AWARD

"Birgit did her research in an intuitive and introspective way, with a visible growth from the interiority to the exteriority but always with an open regard towards the results of her search.
This inner process resulted in a series of jewellery pieces translating a discrete outbreak but veiled with a bald use of form.
She materialised her pieces in a sensitive way where she does not seem to seek the precious and the completely finished.
By this repetitive and reproductive way of working this series has become multi layered and formatting the idea of bas-reliefs.
You are invited to discover and feel this series of works ‘Embracing the Echo’ by Birgit Thalau in silence and with an equal hunger for the poetic and the melancholy of rewriting the past."

• Claire Lavendhomme - jeweler artist, professor at several Art Academies

• Delphine Navez - photographer, founder & director Le Clignoteur

• Françoise Vanderauwera - founder & director Vander A Observatory

• Karin De Buysere - founder & director Galerie Beyond

• Max Gielis - jeweler artist, professor at RHoK Academie

"Inspired by subjects which touch us as human and are related to the realities of today, I am still involved into topics of concern that are rooted in society.

Starting from the question what “desirable” or “valuable” could mean in our material culture, all of my current jewellery works came into being based on earlier ones. I first use a process which unloads my past world from its original materiality and intended significance. By casting replicas of my pieces, they are drastically reduced to one main material and consequently lose their diversity, surface texture, details, colour and the meaning they have been charged with previously. When the matter solidifies, there is for me a disappointment, a void that, at the same time, suggests a need to be filled.

A silence has fallen over the objects, like a hesitation between the authentic and the repeated object. I try to embrace this moment by means of crafting, adapting, letting go and I pursue this approach over and over again. My work is now influenced by the yet unknown, the uncontrolled and the fleeting, and my making process is meant to become a period of contemplation and experimentation.

This development may hide the anterior one, but it does not hide it completely. Past and present, presence and absence, positive and negative… are repeatedly shaped and discarded. A re-evaluation has taken place that may lend to multiple readings and hence creates a magic within the disappearance."