IT’S been a big week for Craft ACT with the opening of two quite different exhibitions at Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre.

The shows combine national, Aboriginal, and international artists as they look at place, country, and home.

The basis of the first exhibition is work by Craft ACT’s artists-in-residence, curated by Anne Radimin under the title “Elements of Place: artists-in-residence”.

Then, in “Transplantations: a sense of place and culture”, a group exhibition touring from the University of Lincoln and curated by Professor Norman Cherry, work by Australian and British jewellery designers is under the spotlight. Craft ACT argues that both exhibitions combine the Australian imagination and its colonial counterparts, to voice thoughts of home and belonging.

“Elements of Place” features Craft ACT’s first Aboriginal artist-in-residence, textile artist and Gumbayngirr woman Ceretha Skinner, and the centre’s first international artist-in-residence, English artist Michael Brennand-Wood. Each has responded to living in the Namadgi National Park in an opportunity provided by program partner ACT Parks and Conservation Service.

Work by 12 Australian and British jewellery artists in “Transplantations” explores each designer’s sense of place and individual cultural identity as a consequence of their personal and family experiences of transplantation in wearable forms, from a koala brooch by Melbourne artist Anna Davern, the fish, silver and shell pins by Scottish maker, Jack Cunningham.

“Elements of Place” and “Transplantations”: Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre, North Building, 1st Floor, 180 London Circuit, Civic, Tuesday to Friday 10-5 and Saturday 12-4 until July 12.