They're both excellent shows and I recommend them, not least for their polished production, although wit, elegance and extravagant bravura are also much in evidence, the latter especially in Nollywood.
I didn't even know there was a Nigerian film industry until this came along, let alone that it is so vast, dynamic, comically dramatic and up there with the fast food industry in its production times.
Anecdote had gone before it and was filling some with dread. But it is beautiful, humorous and frequently touching. It gave my mood a wonderful lift. Radiant Matter is very stylish and infused with sly wit. But I had already had an aesthetic boost before I went up the stairs.
Tony Williams was among those gathered, our long-resident jeweller of international reputation. Despite the sobriquet Mr Williams is not of the same ilk as Michael Hill: he isn't a large-scale retailer.
He makes the wares, designs and fashions the bijoux and is a fine artist-craftsman. (We need some new terminology here because existing labels send confusing signals.) Mr Williams actually describes himself as a goldsmith, which he literally is, with the training and qualifications to match.
But he also works with other precious metals, and jewels, and employs elaborate processes such as enamelling, to make his extraordinary creations. He was wearing one, pinned to his breast, which caught my eye.
Karl Faberge (1846-1920), the illustrious Russian maker of the famous eggs, is also usually styled a jeweller, was in fact a goldsmith and, like Mr Williams, worked with many materials and techniques. Like Mr Williams too, he drew on traditions, ancient and exotic, pillaging millennia and continents with the zeal of an avenging Khan, or a Varangian marauder - one of those Norsemen who conquered Russia. Yet, everything he made was entirely distinctive, just like Mr Williams' productions.
The glittering ornament which had snatched my attention I described to its wearer as a "brooch". It isn't. It's a kilt pin, though I've not seen one like this before. The common sort are those gnarly safety pins which kilt wearers use to fasten the wrap, down near the hem of the garment. There are others, decorative and often personally significant, some formed like daggers, or thistle stalks, or crucifixes. This is different again.
It's shaped like a torque, those open circlets worn by ancient Scythians and Celts, often round the neck but sometimes as bracelets. They evince a kind of barbarism mixed with other things. The simplicity of the design is belied by elaborate decoration and notions of primitivism are dispelled by the potent display of the metalsmith's cunning craft.
Mr Williams' fastener has such a circlet, of silver, its bosses flaring into dragon heads. Its fixer is a pin boldly struck across the circlet and extending like a rapier beyond. The pin is clasped to the circlet at the head before blossoming into the rapier's hasp, in this case filled with a Madeira citrine, glowing like wine in a glass.
Mr Williams has fashioned many dragons, some of which seem more oriental than the ones embellishing the circlet. These are like the prows of Viking ships though fashioned from glittering gold.
Mr Williams tells me he has been making dragons for a long time. That quite a while ago he made a kilt pin incorporating one variety of the motif.
That recently he made another for someone and then thought he wouldn't mind having one himself - the genesis of this eye-catcher.
In our society jewellery is usually thought of as decoration, or ostentation, and often that's all it is. It retains a function as a personal signifier: that the wearer is engaged, married, or a Christian, for example. But such uses are fewer than they were. T
here has always been a role for the artist-jeweller - Faberge is a famous example - but that later contracted. In recent decades there has been a resurgence, accompanied by much innovation. In New Zealand, Dunedin is a substantial production centre of the new art jewellery.
Kobi Bosshard, whose work is very different from Mr Williams', played a significant part in that. Mr Williams is not a lonely eminence, but he isn't characteristic either. Without attempting to say what is, all our practitioners have it in common that their work is expressive. Sometimes it touches fundamental chords.
Mr Williams' pin is not a trinket. It lays its rapier over its circlet gently, like death acknowledging the eternity of life. It is a small thing, and you wear it; but it points a dagger at the heart.
• Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
