METAPHYSICAL HEART
JEWELLERY BY PETER MCKAY
Damian Skinner
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Metaphysical heart : jewellery by Peter McKay.
A storytelling jeweller, working alone on Banks Peninsula, with one eye focused on the artistic heritage of Europe and the other trained on the mythic potential of his local landscape. Welcome to the work (and world) of Peter McKay, one of this country’s senior jewellers. From his early days as an apprentice of Kobi Bosshard, trained in the techniques and aesthetics of European goldsmithing, to the appropriation
of European modernism and Medieval and Renaissance art that marked the achievement of his mature style in the early 1990s, to his recent investigation of what’s come to be known as Canterbury Gothic, McKay’s practice can seem contradictory, different genres with nothing in common.
Taking its name from the Metaphysical Heart series, a long-running narrative in brooch form, Metaphysical Heart: Jewellery by Peter McKay is a retrospective of over three decades of jewellery, surveying the diversity and extent of McKay’s work, and looking for the common threads of technique and concept that bind his work together.
Rim Books, 2007
ISBN 9780473121273 (pbk.)
71 p, :ill, 10.5 x 15 cm
RRP NZ $15 plus packaging and posting
For all orders and requests info@rimbooks.com