Janine Combes Artist and Jeweller
Scope of practice and materials
I make contemporary jewellery, installation works and sculpture. A recent series of sculptural works for an exhibition in 2026 at Narryna House, part of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery references the colonial practice of women collecting seaweeds and using them in decorative works. I make my artworks from recycled plastics, using these materials and forms to interrogate ideas of ocean pollution, and the role of women in contemporary science.
Engraving text has been a significant part of my practice in recent years. I embed words into various materials, including copper, silver, coal and wood, to prompt conversations about history, environment, belonging, climate change and hope. The form of the fragment features strongly in my works - a symbol of something unfinished rather than something broken.
Plastics are materials that are filling our oceans and our bodies. I re-purpose plastics, changing their forms, and coating them in lacquers to harness their luminous qualities and draw attention to pollution, warming seas and the impact of consumerism.
I used plastic and silver in these sea butterfly brooches exhibited at Handmark Gallery in 2019 and then at the Bond Store, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in 2024, an exhibition held in conjunction with an International Zooplankton Conference. Sea butterflies or pteropods live in the Southern Ocean and are often viewed as a 'canary in the coalmine' when it comes to climate change due to the impact of warming seas.
I've always been attracted to the juxtaposition of unexpected materials and forms, particularly human-made objects aligned with those from the natural world. In the artwork shown above a tail of a dead skate is used to form an installation called We are entangled'- fishing net, silver hooks, resin and tanned skin.
In the artwork shown below fish scales are coated in lacquer and inserted onto a vintage silver platter that has been blackened, an exploration of colonial exploitation of our seas and contemporary attitudes to marine conservation.
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During my Master of Fine Arts research, I started re-inhabiting abandoned objects, using inserted text, new materials, and patinas to trade on the associated histories but create new stories. This artwork called The words are here reflects on the fact that many of the atrocities of Australian colonial history were recorded. It is there for settler Australians to read if we choose to see.
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Forget me not - a brooch made from vintage military buttons engraved with text references the Australian Wars, conflicts often unacknowledged, the role of the British Crown and invader plants finding their way into native forests.