Research Abstract

A suite of tales: contemporary jewellery and objects of adornment as boundary markers of preference and social status.

I use the platform of contemporary jewellery for my creative practice. I build visual tension via metonymy and metaphor to convey a narrative as a social message. I consider reuse, the up-cycling ethos, and the visual aesthetics seated in punk to challenge conventions associated with jewellery objects—via material subversion. The reading of my work may induce a shared recall of time, invite curiosity, or signal a shared connection to a space. In each form, I visually construct a type of realistic image aiming to be read as a social narrative—centrally positioned as autoethnography. This narratological framing functions through the jewellery forms I fabricate via reconstructing social history images, fusing objects from the period, and text-based language. The latter predominately through musical lyrics, phrases, and verses found in proto-punk, punk, and post-punk. My studio practice includes collecting from primary and secondary markets. I gather post-consumables from the mid-to-late 20th century, embedding material design legacies found in the period into my works. I curate a spectrum of materials from contemporary to found objects that I collage, assemble or fuse in each piece. The narrative jewellery forms I build are in part memento, artefact, and emblematic—capturing specific memories refashioned as distilled moments with points of connection in social history, politics, and culture.

Bio

I am a Perth based artist; I have travelled extensively and exhibited in over 30 group exhibitions in Paris, Perth, Fremantle, Melbourne, Sydney, and Townsville. I have held six solo exhibitions in Perth, Sydney, and Townsville. I graduated as a painting major from Claremont School of Art at the age of 18. In 2010, I was awarded a Master’s Degree in Fine Art (Jewellery Production) from Curtin University, and I am currently progressing through a PhD at RMIT (Art). My creative focus is contemporary jewellery and object. I consider how contemporary jewellery may convey a social message to induce a shared recall of time, invite curiosity or playfulness. In my work, I explore materiality through the crossing-over, relocating and recontextualising of objects. I assemble, fuse and collage, post-consumables, parts of vintage objects, and precious metals. I use this type of material subversion to break, interrupt circuits of value. I aim to construct forms that convey a social message, to build visual tension using the mechanisms of metonymy and metaphor. Concomitant relationships connect with materiality through contemporary jewellery objects because of the agency that we, individually or socially, assign to adornment. I consider reuse, the up-cycling ethos and visual aesthetics seated in post-punk.

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