Artists

Gina Fairley is an emerging jeweller making under the name OLIO Jewellery based in Mittagong, Gundungarra

She brings together glass lampworking and casting techniques with silversmithing and the introduction of paper, rubber and organic material, in an embrace of sustainable material thinking and use. She has studied independently under glass artists Kathryn Wardell and Scott Chaseling, and Mexican glass jeweller Luisa Restrepo, however her practice has been largely self-driven. She presented her debut solo exhibition at Retford Park (2024), and in 2025 was a guest judge for national award JMGA Profile at the Australian Design Centre, Sydney.

In Residence at Bundanon

I will follow the long tradition of artists walking as a creative process, approaching the residency as a daily, diarised practice of slow looking and making. Walking the landscape will extend my jewellery practice through site-responsive material pairings, informing my use of organic and found materials in dialogue with reformed glass and silver. I am interested in how these pairings trigger memory and charged narratives of place, resisting hierarchy and embracing tensions, fragility, and impermanence. This reflexive approach will allow me to develop an increasingly individual jewellery voice at a pivotal moment in my practice.