SIM LÜTTIN

Sim, from Naarm (Melbourne), was born in 1977 and has a European heritage, with her father's side originating from Switzerland. Raised in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne, she was instilled with a penchant for meticulousness from an early age, a trait that permeates her approach to her practice.

 

Sim's work has a sense of calm and sophistication—the delicacy of the forms and the attention to detail created in her signature monochromatic silver and black colour scheme. Her distinctive aesthetic embraces her love of oxidised sterling silver and the carefully considered additions of alternative materials, such as wood, graphite, glass, and sublimated aluminium. She transforms the materials she works with into creative, poetic, and sensitive pieces. 1

 

Nostalgia and melancholy imbue her work, which delves into the nuances of the everyday and results in conceptually engaging and beautiful reflections. Sim challenges her self-imposed paradigms through her work by physically recording and recreating her daily experiences and environment, allowing her time to reflect on aspects of the human condition. 

 

Her practice plots a course across time: examining notions of ritual, personal authenticity, and materiality—she inserts meaning at each point on a highly personal internal map. Her practice is grounded in daily routine, and the first charted position is her gaze: a still or moving image is taken, uploaded, and then distilled. A brief pause allows ideas, motifs and shapes to emerge that are translated into objects. This pause enables Sim to consider what these moments are presenting, searching for meaning in the often mundane, continually reaching for a connection between instinct (image) and intellect (object). 2 

 

In the mid-2000s, Sim began time-based, year-long, piece-a-day enquiries that attempt to find meaning in daily rituals and observations. Her object-based practice has expanded to include photography and video that she records on her camera phone. She then numbers, titles, and organises the images into monochromatic and chronological collections that she archives, forming a rich source of research material to inform new series of contemporary jewellery.

 

Sim has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, including at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria; Museum Bellerive, Zurich; Galerie Marzee, Netherlands; Museum Voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem; Museum of Arts + Crafts, Itami; Velvet da Vinci, San Francisco; SoFA New York and Chicago with Charon Kransen Arts. She has presented seven solo shows in Australia and the USA and has artwork in the collections of the Art Gallery of South Australia; Bluestone Collection, Melbourne; Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Melbourne; and Gallerie Marzee in the Netherlands. Recently, he was the Deputy Chair at Craft Victoria and a board member of the Public Galleries Association of Victoria.

 

Sim lives and works in Naarm, Melbourne, as a contemporary jeweller, craftsperson, artist, arts leader and co-founder of Art et al.