Speckled with stars…

Alta Forma is delighted to present the second in our series of duo, collaborative and symbiotic exhibitions for 2025. ‘Sometimes something’ presents two new bodies of work by Naarm based artists Eli Giannini and Mascha Moje.

Eli Giannini’s new series of neckpieces and pendants are inspired by archetypal bead necklace forms reinterpreted through the playful materials of translucent plastic beads and multicoloured thread. While working the artist recalls iconic American architect Louis Khan’s quote, “What do you want, brick?” – an appeal for material sensitivity. In Eli’s case the question is, “What do you want, thread?” The answer came through making. Chance and meditative processes inform the design of each work, and the coloured sashiko thread weaves through the beads, creating and binding together the geometric forms.

Mascha Moje’s new project includes neckpieces, rings and furniture-like sculpture that combine diverse approaches to materials like porcelain, steel, glass and aluminium. This new work extends the artist’s interest in making wearable formworks in metal that support intricate beading. Mascha’s new work is inspired by pictorial Milanese bobbin lace, Venetian glass millefiori, star constellations and the abundance of flowers in her studio garden. Both artists compose works by layering materials and components, utilising thread to weave, stitch and join, harnessing abstract and unruly materials into concise and elegant forms.

Please join us for the Opening Celebration on Saturday 29 March from 3-5pm

About the artists:

“I have wanted to make ever since I can remember, whether it was in child’s play with blocks, Lego or Meccano (packs of playing cards were just as good when nothing else was available). I remember feeling happiest when engaged in the making process or when learning how to cook, sew, embroider and use craft tools with my grandmothers or learning basic metal-working skills in my dad’s workshop. Later having been encouraged to take up architecture, which is a design rather than a making profession, set me on a course where design dominated my professional life. The characteristics that my design practice share with my art practice revolve around story telling. I don’t mean this in a figurative way but from a typological perspective. Precedent and tradition play a big part in the way I work. Over the years I found that this is as a way of communicating the intention of the design...a house is a house because it looks like a house, for example. Shaping a neckpiece which has the structure of a traditional pendant or a necklace, even when abstracted communicates something we are familiar with in our own culture.” Eli Giannini, 2025

Eli Giannini is a Naarm/Melbourne architect, practicing artist and art critic. She has promoted design, theory and research through her writing, exhibitions and conference presentations and as eminent architect of design competitions juries. Eli’s practice includes extensive collaborations with Sue Buchanan (SUPERPLEASED) specialising in site-responsive works and exhibiting with Sue in object-based shows. As part of this collaborative duo with Sue Buchanan she has been a finalist in the Griffith National Contemporary Jewellery Award in 2021, theMelbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture and the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award. Eli’s contemporary jewellery has been exhibited during Radiant Pavilion in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021 and 2024. It has also been selected for theToowoomba Regional Gallery Contemporary Wearables Prize in 2017 and 2021 and2023 as well as for the National Contemporary Jewelry Award in 2024. Eli’s works have been shown in group exhibitions at QV Mag, Launceston, Tasmania, First Site Gallery, RMIT and at the RMIT Gallery. Eli has reviewed contemporary art jewellery shows for Arts Crafts International, Klimt2 and Architecture AU.

“It was a long hot summer . I would take breaks from my work in the studio to walk into the garden. I’d look at the flowers. Jo and I said, “More flowers this year”; small , large, golden, lilac, blue and purple. By the end of summer a lot of my works look like flowers. I never intended to make flowers. I just lived among them. “We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened.” Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain”, Mascha Moje, 2025

Mascha Moje’s practice distills ideas of material memory, while employing the impeccable craft of the master maker across a broad range of materials. For more than two decades Mascha has predominantly worked within the field of Jewellery, her interest stemming from questions of how objects are worn and the interface of body and object. She employs a reductionist mode of making, fascinated with the language of the material and the essence of form. Mascha’s practice is not defined by material, craft or placement, but the careful consideration of given parameters, be they the interface of body and worn object or object in space. Mascha welcomes these challenges to expand on possible answers around closely investigated concepts.

Mascha Moje was born in Hamburg Germany. In 1984 she travelled to Australia to undertake training in gold and silversmithing at the Australian National University, Canberra Institute of the Arts, completing her studies in 1989.  She went on to teaching roles at RMIT University, ANU and Monash University. Moje has exhibited extensively in Australia, as well as exhibitions in Denmark, Holland, Belgium, New York, Germany, Austria, Japan and completed a 3 month residency in the Ceramic Centre Hertogenbosch, Holland. Her work is widely collected in both private and public collections including NGA, NGV, AGSA, Museum for Art and Design in New York, and several public collections in Germany.

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