Thursday, November 11, 2010

The power of fragments




Living in a rural, coastal village I often walk and forage along unpaved roads and beaches. Pieces of broken and forgotten objects catch my attention and evoke further investigation into their origins and use value as a material. I analyse them in terms of manipulation, for example earlier this year I found fragments of plastic fencing and garden mesh on the beach and while rummaging through a white elephant stall started a collection of old wooden bowls, both inspiring structural materials that I currently use.

I am a Bricoleur

Touchable series

Materials: thread, plastic mesh, acrylic paint, brass, copper, silver

Materials: irrigation pipe, thread


Materials: wooden bowl, irrigation pipe, thread, acrylic paint, paper
An aspect of bricolage is where people obtain objects from one culture or context and use it to create new sub-cultures or identies. A well known example of this would be the Punk movement where the safety pin became a form of decoration. Likewise, New Zealand Contemporary Jewelleries Bone, Stone, Shell movement hybridised materials and processes from across cultural divisions to give new connotations that essentially questioned issues of preciousness, the use of non-traditional materials and techniques, a concept which strongly influences my own practice.

Monday, August 9, 2010

A resonating desire to touch






Through a continued investigation of my bricolage process, utilising banal materials that are at hand, scouting local hardware stores, second hand stores and markets I have strengthened and built on the compositional outcomes of my objects. A repetitive use of materials, using multiple dissected components has allowed me to assemble strange yet somehow familiar objects that allude to being handled or interacted with through a resonating desire to touch and investigate their intricate nature.




Thursday, July 1, 2010

Metadecorative: New work by Mary Curtis


This week I have been very privileged in assisting Mary Curtis with her latest exhibit at Objectspace, Metadecorative: New work by Mary Curtis - 3 - 31 July 2010. http://www.objectspace.org.nz/programme/whatson.php The opening is tonight, 2 July at 6pm followed by an Artist talk on Saturday the 3rd at 11am. Mary’s jewellery is meticulous, I found myself drooling over it the first day, and it is definitely not a show to be missed! Mary is presenting the works in vitrines, museum cabinets and bell jars that project a sense of space and floating that allow you to view the work from all sides, the significance being that the back is as important as the front. Mary’s choice of patterns and materials are nostalgic and when framed with her acutely lacy metalwork it emphasises clearly the value and personal associations of popular décor and textiles of our past that slowly become lost.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

'Broach Me' 7days-7wearers Project

This semester while continuing with bricolage, I have been looking at the space between wearer and viewer while positioning my objects more specifically on the body. I am interested in how wearing contemporary jewellery can affect your personal space and how everyday objects direct relationships.

As part of my experiments I decided to take a leaf from Kristin D’Agostino’s 'BOM' http://broachofthemonth.blogspot.com/ where she has 'created a project in an effort to reinstate the community aspect of traditional craft into the contemporary jewellery culture'. By appropriating Kristen's project, I hoped to use it as a tool that would help me understand the relationship between a wearer and viewer more clearly than just my preconceived perseptions as maker. 'Broach Me’ 7 days-7wearers', entailed one brooch and 7 willing jewellery makers, wearers and viewers from within MSVA to wear one of my brooch's for a day. Each wearer was expected to meet with the next wearer after a 24 hour period and past it on. The brooch came with a wee box and a note book where each wearer was asked to comment on how the brooch had affected their own body awareness and any interactions it had initiated with others.

Sinead and Lucy

" The brooch has a lot of movement and moves to the beat of the music on the radio with me"
Paula and Sharon
"I always wear my little bag on right shoulder, opps-careful of the brooch Paula!"
"Joey said ' That's really cool it's really in your face... well its in my face anyway."

Lucy
"Reuben and I did have a bit of fun with it, pretending to attack him and play out scenes from 'Dr Who'!

Darshini and Laura

"Deciding where to place it was difficult, didn't want to get stares in the wrong places."
"I'm not trying to touch you there, I just want to feel it - Vicky"

Jutta
"When I hugged my friend good-bye the brooch got caught in her jacket so we carefully had to seperate each other"


Through this 'mini-project' I hoped to bring awareness to how an object can direct decisions that a person makes and the relationships they have with others . Six of the seven participants are avid contemporary jewellery advocates and one, Jutta, was new. She was the one I got the most delight from, she was so excited to wear one of my brooches and very keen to show it off and make the most of it. Much to her dismay thought, wearing such a piece proved to be a challenge, even though I had relented slightly and decided to give the wearers a more practical rather than difficult one to wear for daily student life. All 7 wearers were wonderful, meeting each day to pass on the brooch and let me photograph the interaction, even when circumstances meant that an arranged meeting posed some difficulties. The brooch stood true as an object by making the wearer conscious of the world that is external to them and kept each participant to their word and directed their day, while better establishing relationships between us.
Thanks girls!!, and of coarse Kristen for your inspiration, it was a fun and enlightening week.

Monday, April 12, 2010

What's the object?
















I am currently a 4th year BVA student at MSVA, Manukau School of Visual Arts, now on that slippery slope to graduation. These are a few select objects from a series in 2009 called "What's the object?' where my working method was Bricolage, which I used to construct strange and sometimes wearable objects intended to offer multiple possibilities (like bricolage) for fiddling and discovering.

I am interested in Nicolas Bourriuad’s theories around ‘Postproduction’ where he states,

‘That the artistic question is no longer “what we can make that is new” but, how can we make do with what we have?” – How can we produce singularity and meaning from this chaotic mass of objects, names, references that constitute our daily life.’




These are a few examples of my work that are in a pod at the Satillite Gallery from 13 April to 3 May 2010 along with Laura Robertson. www.satellitegallery.co.nz/satellite-pods/123-pod-3.html

Bourriaud, N. (2002). The use of objects. In Postproduction: Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World (pp.23-33) New York: Lukas & Sternberg.

Monday, February 8, 2010

you have to start somewhere