A Ring Built to Come Apart

The letters behind Yours Truly span two and a half thousand years, from Sappho to a note posted from Italy in living memory. Some are famous, some were never meant to be read twice. Djurdjica Kesic chose one that is technically not a love letter at all: the seventh of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, in Charlie Louth’s translation.

The letter turns on solitude, and on what love might be once solitude is no longer treated as its opposite.

"And this more human form of love (which will be performed in infinitely gentle and considerate fashion, true and clear in its creating of bonds and dissolving of them) will resemble the one we are struggling and toiling to prepare the way for, the love that consists in two solitudes protecting, defining and welcoming one another."

Two phrases did the work for her. "True and clear in its creating of bonds and dissolving of them", and "the love that consists in two solitudes protecting, defining and welcoming one another".

From those she made solitaire rings in yellow gold, set with rubies and sapphire, designed to be stacked together or worn apart. In her own words, it is the fluidity of it, of pieces coming together or being taken apart, allowing for change, for ebbs and flows.

There is something quietly radical in a ring built to come apart. Most rings in this exhibition are addressed outward, from one person to another. These are addressed to the space between two people, and they hold that space open. Worn separately they are complete. Worn together they are something else, and neither state is the compromise.

Yours Truly is a group exhibition of rings by fourteen of our artists, each one made in response to a letter. 12 to 28 November 2026, at 28 Russell Place, Melbourne.