BOOST at The National

Lisa Walker & Josephine Cachemaille

07 May – 06 Jun 2026

Lisa Walker is a contemporary jeweller based in Wellington, New Zealand.  She has a Diploma of Craft and Design from Dunedin School of Art (1989), and co-founded Workshop 6 in 1993. Walker studied at the Akadamie der Bildenden Künste, Munich, under Otto Künzli (1995-2001), before establishing her own studio in Munich (2002-2009). She now lives and works in Island Bay, Wellington.

Lisa Walker repurposes the world into a wearable language. Well known for her expansive use of materials, influences and construction techniques, with iconoclastic exuberance Walker poses questions about the possibilities and meaning of wearable objects. Remaining in close conversation with the history–and potential futures–of the medium, Walker’s work is deeply invested in exploring the limits and boundaries of what jewellery can do.

Walker has an extensive international exhibition history and her work is held in many international collections.  Her prestigious awards include Foerderpreis der Stadt Muenchen (2007), Francoise van den Bosch Award (2009), and the Arts Laureate Award of the New Zealand Arts Foundation (2015).  A major retrospective of her work I want to go to my bedroom but I can’t be bothered opened at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand in 2018. A touring version of this exhibition, She wants to go to her bedroom but can’t be bothered toured to RMIT Design Hub, Melbourne, Australia (2019) and Villa Stuck in Munich, Germany(2020). In 2022, Lisa received an Officer of the Order of New Zealand Merit (ONZM).  In 2023, she received the Bayerische Staatpreis (Bavarian State Prize) in Munich.

Josephine Cachemaille is an installation artist who makes objects and assemblages. She has a deeply anthropomorphic methodology, approaching materials as sensuous bodies with agency, often describing them as alive, as “collaborators”, as a family. In this sense, she is exploring the potential of art-making as magical, as a kind of relational ontology, as a way to challenge consensus reality.

Josephine says her intersubjective approach to materials kindles attachments and enduring affectionate relationships between herself and the final works, which often evoke bodies or entities. These pieces then populate installations which operate as psychological landscapes rich in symbolic visual language, that she can examine, order, and arrange as she thinks through tender things.

The making processes and the final works themselves are concerned with cultivating receptivity to states of wonder and enchantment that make her feel connected to the world in ways that are meaningful. She says that rather than offering escape, or a flight from reality, this can foster a sense of care and ethical concern for our futures.

Josephine has a Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art and a degree in Psychology. She has won significant national art awards and had multiple solo and public exhibitions nationally and internationally, including representing New Zealand at the Beijing Biennale 2019.  She lives in Whakatū Nelson with her husband, writer and music journalist Grant Smithies.

Click here to check out the exhibition.