Shaun Leane for SHOWstudio
The latest edition of SHOWstudio’s gallery/shop SHOWcabinet, curated by jeweler extraordinaire Shaun Leane, is reminiscent of another cabinet of curiosities currently on display in London: Growth and Form, an early work by Richard Hamilton showing as part of his major retrospective in the Tate Modern.
The latter contains a skull and a spine of unidentified large animals, a few eggs, rocks and crystals, alongside manmade grid-based structures and photographs. Leane’s SHOWcabinet comprises a piece of barely crystallised raw emerald from a Zambian mine, a board of mounted tropical beetles, paper cut flowers under glass domes and a live snake, as well as sculptures and photographs by various artists including Damien Hirst; not to mention eight artifacts specially created for the exhibition by Leane himself: a 22 ct gold beetle brooch, a diamond bracelet inspired by a serpent’s spine, cuffs in the shape of cherry blossoms, Macaw feather earrings, and so on.