'Portable Stillness' by Ko Jou Chen

19 May 2026 - 12 Jun 2026
11:00am - 05:00pm
FREE
First Site Gallery | Storey Hall Basement, 344 Swanston Street, Melbourne

'Portable Stillness' (2025), is an ongoing spatial installation that explores how the making of miniature objects and floating altar-like displays can express memory, collection, and the domestic in transition. Motivated by the instability of diasporic living and continual relocation, Ko Jou Chen constructs handmade structures that carry memory and presence across her shifting environments.

The miniature contemporary jewellery objects, inspired by the artist’s personal collection of sentimental items, are reinterpreted through hand fabrication as sculptural carriers of memory. The exhibition integrates works made from the refined technique of soldering metals, and the modest materiality of balsa wood and cardboard, bringing these elements together to interrogate hierarchies of material and the role of collecting. In doing so, it positions collection not as preservation, but as a process of longing for permanence.

Please join us to celebrate the opening of this exhibition at First Site Gallery, 5– 7pm, Wednesday 20 May.

Ko Jou Chen is a Taiwanese artist based in Naarm/Melbourne whose practice includes contemporary jewellery, object-making, and spatial installation. Her work explores materiality, memory, and the quiet rituals of domestic space. Through making and display, she reflects on how objects can hold stillness, comfort, and presence within the shifting spaces she inhabits.

Chen completed both her Bachelor of Fine Art and Master of Fine Art (Coursework) at RMIT, where she received the Dean’s Award (2025). She also holds an Advanced Diploma of Jewellery and Object Design from Melbourne Polytechnic. Her work has been recognised with The Future Leaders Award at Fresh! (Craft Victoria, 2024) and the Jewellers and Metalsmiths Group of Australia (JMGA) Award at Graduate Metal XVI in 2024.

Thumbnail and banner image: Ko Jou Chen, Portable Stillness, 2025 (installation view). Balsa wood, brass, copper, fine silver.

Ko Jou Chen, ‘Portable Stillness’, 2025 (installation view). Image courtesy of the artist.

Opening Hours

11am - 5pm Tuesday to Friday

Closed on public holidays

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Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.

Learn more about our commitment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

'Portable Stillness' by Ko Jou Chen