Born in Sint-Niklaas (Flanders, Belgium), Tineke grew up with a passion for art and culture. As a child, she was taught textile techniques including fine crochet by her paternal grandmother near the lace-region of Aalst. She enrolled in fine arts and performing arts at the Academy in Sint Niklaas while growing up and went on to study Criminological Sciences at the University of Ghent. She has lived and worked in many countries, including Burundi, Zambia and Australia and travels to remote parts of the world such as Papua New Guinea, Easter Island and Madagascar. 

After migrating to Australia in 2001 Tineke furthered her love for making by enrolling in Jewellery Design and Fabrication at the West-Australian TAFE as a mature-aged student, and has since developed her own style.  She combines working with wire with traditional jewellery–making techniques and setting of stones, and ‘organic casting’ to recreate original forms from nature in previous metal. Tineke redefines ‘precious’ by incorporating uncut precious stones and seeds of unique flora, for instance.  She regularly gives workshops.

Fascinated with the natural world and re-creating 3D forms into metal, Tineke was an Artist in Residence at SymbioticA (University of Western Australia, 2012) where she became familiar with ‘corrosion casting’ body shapes such as airways and blood vessels. Initially this resulted in the ‘mouse lung jewellery’ collection, drawing attention to lung health, shown at Oats Street Factory. Tineke forged a collaboration with the Museum of Animal Morphology (University of Ghent, Belgium) which in 2021 culminated in a number of specific works in ‘Tributaries’: a set of equine lungs in polyeutherane, an installation of pony hooves’ arterial shapes.

As an artist mostly working in metal, Tineke creates 3D ‘sketches’ in fine metals of some of these forms: a sheep’s snout in copper wire, a horse hoof in fine silver, a horse’s eye, thus representing and making visible the hidden landscape inside the body, to be juxtaposed with the external, visible world.

Part of Tineke’s practice is landscape photography during walks and visit to places. In the past few years the artist started incorporating landscape stills, both printed and projected, in jewellery and sculpture shows. 

Tineke Van der Eecken has exhibited her jewellery at various galleries around Perth with solo exhibitions at Mundaring Arts Centre, Monart Studio and Gallery, Elements Gallery and Gadfly Gallery among others. Her exhibition ‘Tributaries’ was part of the 2021 Indian Ocean Craft Triennial. As President of the Jewellers and Metalsmiths Group of Western Australia (JMGA WA) she is working on hosting the 2024 National Jewellery Conference.

Tineke is also a writer of poetry and travel memoirs. In recent years, poetry has become a part of the visual display of her work, alongside pieces informing or drawing attention to the effects of climate change, of human settlement and migration. 

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Workshops 

2021 Workshops jewellery and sculpture-making at Mundaring Arts Centre

2012-2014 private workshops

2008 Guest Artist/Mentor/Jewellery Artist for Allsorts jewellery workshops Arts Access Central Australia (disability and the arts)

2006-2007 Workshops facilitator jewellery, textiles  & writing Vrije Ateliers, St Niklaas  

Artist/Curator

2006 Forest Floor traveling exhibition  Victoria Park (WA) – Sinaai (Belgium) – Newark (UK) showcasing the work of Stitch‘n  Bitch artists 

Artist Residencies

2017 Artist in residence Callosa d’En Saria, Spain.

2011 Symbiotica Biological Art Residency

2007 Collaboration with stylist Sylvia Hatzl in Brussels –  dance & photography

Awards and achievements

Fine Metal

2021 Melville Art Awards finalist

2004 Highly Commended in Works in Fine Metal/Jewellery, York Art and Craft Society Awards Melville Art Awards, runner-up for sculpture award

2004 Memento Awards, finalist. 

Poetry and writing

Highly Commended at 2021 Ros Spencer Poetry Prize

Shortlisted for 2016 City of Fremantle TAG Hungerford Award for ‘Traverse’

Winner of Katherine W Treanor Poetry Award 2011

Ubud Readers and Writers Festival 2011 Poetry Slam Festival Choice Award

2012 OOTA Poetry Award second prize.

Memberships

Member of the Design Factory (UK) in 2007

Jewellers and Metalsmiths of WA (JMGA) (ongoing)

Qualifications

2002 Cert IV Jewellery design and fabrication (part-time)

Fremantle TAFE  Fremantle Prison campus.

Publications 

Van der Eecken, Tineke. Traverse. Wild Weeds Press, 2018. ISBN ISBN 978 – 0 – 6483206-7-8, Paperback, 220pp

Van der Eecken, Tineke. Cafe d'Afrique. YouwriteOn, London, 2008. ISBN 978-1849233200. 

Poetry

Full publication list and details on www.tinekevandereeckenauthor.com.

Tineke Van der Eecken is a multidisciplinary Australian artist, based in Fremantle (Western Australia).  She established ‘Tineke Creations’ in 2002 as a sustainable business and has been designing and exhibiting contemporary jewellery and works in fine metal in Australia, Belgium and the United Kingdom for over 15 years. She works in fine metal creating contemporary jewellery and small sculptures, landscape photography, biological arts, as well as poetry and writing.