The exibition titled Contemporary Polish Jewellery from Legnica has been organised on the initiative of the Office of the Marshall of Lower Silesia as one of the projects promoting the region's diverse cultural offer. The task has been entrusted to the Gallery of Art in Legnica, an institution with a long tradition and international reputation for presenting, promoting and documenting Polish contemporary jewellery. Over twenty five years, the Gallery has been organised around hundred group and individual exhibitions, actions and happenings, most of them documented in accompanying catalogues and other publications. The fact that the city of Legnica has become the venue for the well-known SILVER competition and a successful forum for contemporary jewellery reflects the region's rich tradition, reaching back to the Middle Ages, in the mining and processing of gold, silver, copper and lead ores. Today Legnica is the centre of the so-called Copper Region and the KGHM Polish Copper is also the world's second largest silver producer. It was silver, an attractive jewellery material, that attracted young Polish artists back in the late 1970s and inspired the title of the pioneering competition and exhibition. Over the year , the subseqent editions of the Legnica SILVER Review has continued to provide a forum uniting artist/jewellers and inspiring their creativity. They have helped to bring jewellery into focus for the public and critics, confirming its status as a an art rather than craft, stimulating new tendencies and approaches and reflecting current developments and documenting changes that have occurred over the decades. Today, Legnica remains an enclave of unbound creativity, a forum for avant- garde demonstrations and artistic confrontations; a cult place for jewellery artists.

The present exibition, titled Contemporary Polish Jewellery from Legnica is an element of new promotional strategy. The Organisers have invited over 30 leading Polish artists and designers and also a group of young artists who in the future will likely define a new direction for Polish jewellery. This retrospective exhibition gives a good idea of the condition of experimental jewellery in Poland from 1995 to the present. First of all, it shows a range of creative attitudes and approaches, starting from the geometrical trend, today continued in designer and mass-produced jewellery, to formal experiments exploring non-traditional materials, to narrative and conceptual statements that confirm jewellery's place among contemporary media of artistic expression and visual communication. Addressed to the international public, art critics and media, the exibiton promotes Polish jewellery but also the idea of the Legnica competition. Certainly the processes of European integration will also affect the activity of artist/ jewellers and help connect into a network the galleries and institutions supporting the development of avant-garde jewellery . We hope that the Gallery of Art in Legnica will play an active role in this process and continue promoting Polish jewellery art in Europe.

Andrzej Bandkowski	Andrzej Bielak	Andrzej Boss	Agnieszka Bruzda
Rafal Burczynski	Jacek Byczewski	Bogumil Bytomski	Piotr Cieciura
Slawomir Fijalkowski	Marta Bogusz Eugeniusz Gowkielewicz	Marcin Gronkowski	Jerzy Jabczynski
Giedymin Jablonski	Joanna Jaworska	Paweł Kaczynski	Jarosław Kwasik
Joanna Mirecka-Szuleta	Monika Oczkowska	Tomasz Ogrodowski	Mariusz Pajaczkowski
Jacek A. Rochacki	Krzysztof Roszkiewicz	Marta Schoenek	Jan Suchodolski
Andrzej Szadkowski	Jarosław Westermark	Arkadiusz Wolski	Dariusz Zaranski
Antek Zaremski	Marcin Zaremski	Tomasz Zaremski	Jakub Zeligowski

photo: Jerzy Malinowski, Jerzy Janicki