Bic Tieu
JEWELLERY DESIGNER
Contact Bic
T: 0412 345280
Bic Tieu is a Sydney-based contemporary jewellery object designer-maker. She combines her inspiration from the sensibility of Asian art with traditional art methods and digital technology. Bic uses various methods such as Japanese lacquer application to create forms and surfaces that merge a myriad of ideas and themes together.
Bic’s fascination with East Asian lacquer and her desire to recreate the characteristics of maki-e lead her to the birthplaces of lacquering in Asia. To further her knowledge, Bic first spent some time in Vietnam, where she created a body of works and authored a dissertation titled ‘Traditional processes of Vietnamese lacquer and their applications to contemporary jewellery and small scale body related objects‘. While writing her dissertation she also curated an exhibition at Kudos Gallery in 2006.
Not long after the success of her exhibition, Bic undertook a two-year residency at the world-famous Kitamura Koubou Studios in Wajima, immersing in the rich tradition of Japanese lacquerware to hone her skills through traditional training. Bic has also taken a masterclass workshop with the renowned German jewellery artist Otto Kunzli and worked as an intern with Swiss born Sabine Pagan of Pyrmont Object Studios.
Bic exhibits her works within Australia and Asia, and maintains a research practice. Her work has been awarded grants and residency programs including Asialink and the Australia Council for the Arts. An Associate Lecturer at UNSW Art & Design, Bic is now currently a PhD candidate at ANU, Canberra, and holds a Masters of Design from UNSW.
Bic curated in the exhibition ‘Shifts in Japanese Materiality’ that was held at The Japan Foundation, Sydney gallery from February 2 – March 17, 2018. The exhibition was of contemporary design practice, a display of the changing nature of materiality in Japanese object-making culture featuring the works of 7 artists from Japan and Australia.
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