Andrea Auer: mother of pearls

The artist and designer Andrea Auer, known for her oversized beads made of cling film and jewellery made of Bakelite or electrical cables, is also showing early works made of metal in her first solo museum exhibition and providing a comprehensive insight into her work.

Her body objects are characterised by a minimalist approach to form and material, precision and craftsmanship, conceptual considerations and the use of everyday materials that are transformed into small treasures as author's jewellery.

The material Bakelite, which went down in design history as the first fully synthetic plastic and became popular in the jewellery sector thanks to Coco Chanel, plays a special role in her work. With shiny black earrings made of machine knobs or the necklace with the mouthpiece of a telephone receiver, Andrea Auer refers to the socio-historical significance of the material 100 years after its boom and enters into a dialogue with objects from the collections of the Province of Upper Austria, the Technology Collection and the Folklore and Everyday Culture Collection.