Exhibition at International Jewellery London (IJL) at Olympia 2019

Press Release

The work of a British-Jordanian artist on display at Olympia during International Jewellery London explores the spiritual dimension to our relationship with gold.

Merna Liddawi uses water gilding techniques favoured by Renaissance artists and draws on the sacred art of iconography in works that invite us to ‘discover hidden beauty and harmony in the universe’.

‘Gold emits light like nothing else, especially through water gilding, and so it’s little wonder that the ancients revered it as a sacred material,’ says Liddawi, who is now based in Sussex. ‘Gold has hidden beauty and depth, which speaks of the eternal and the ethereal, and so invites us to consider our place in the world. As we reflect on gold, we reflect on ourselves.’

Liddawi, whose work can be seen at stand M33 throughout the show, describes her art as a ‘spiritual journey’, both in its expression and its creative process. An academic background in maths and science informs her fascination with repetitive pattern and geometry, which she sees as uniting everything from atom to cosmos. Likewise, her creative process is meditative: she creates her own base materials reviving medieval methods used by Byzantine artists.

 Liddawi’s work has been exhibited internationally, in London and across Europe. She was awarded the prestigious ‘Lorenzo il Magnifico’ painting award at the XI Florence Biennale 2017. Her paintings are in private collections in the Middle East, Europe, South Africa and the US.