Samantha Dennis
Samantha Dennis – 'Coleoptera' Series Brooch (Metallic Small Horns)
"My creative practice is inspired by natural history and the ways it can alter the animal subject, how becoming specimen can elevate "lower animals" to curiosities and wonders."
Dennis is interested in the way that jewellery can define how to engage with an object, prescribing a relationship to our body and implying value in our minds. Dennis' works often contemplate how context affects the perception of an animal, how in the home we might fear the same creature we are so drawn to in the specimen cabinet, and how the beauty or marvel of creatures can be lost while they are alive because they are otherly and hard to relate to.
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Samantha Dennis is a visual artist working in lutruwita (Tasmania). Sam is fascinated by the ways society has sought to explain and order the phenomena of life. Her work navigates themes from natural history and the material qualities of fine crafts, such as goldsmithing and ceramics, to reflect on the relationship between people and nature, with a particular interest in how we conceive animals that are often considered unrelatable, undesirable, unfamiliar.
Sam has received a range of project funding, grants, commissions, and residencies through the Regional Arts Fund, Australia Council for the Arts, and Arts Tasmania. She is the winner of the 2016 Artentwine Biennale Small Sculpture Prize, the 2019 Design Tasmania Jewellery Award and the 2019 FIND Gallery Jewellery Bursary. In recent years Sam has collaborated on a number of large-scale cross-disciplinary performances and installations, and in 2024 completed her PhD study titled 'The Poetic Specimen'.
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Material: glazed porcelain, sterling silver, stainless steel, epoxy.
Dimensions: approx. 12 x 6 x 2cm