Momentarily Here is a year-long photography & art jewellery project.
I will present a selection of work from my current investigation Momentarily Here in a two person show with painter Kirrily Hammond titled 'Keepsake'. The exhibition will be featured as part of the Radiant Pavilion exhibition program in August in Melbourne.
Keepsake plots a unique course across time—small traces captured on an iPhone between night and day, home and work, travelling from one place to another. The quiet moments when we pause and ruminate on what it all means before ‘busy’ takes over. The 2017 piece-a-day project collection will inform new work that I've created for 'Keepsake' at Bundoora Homestead in August 2017.
Keepsake will present a unique combination of painting and jewellery practices and will showcase intimate oil paintings on copper by Kirrily Hammond and contemporary jewellery and photography by Sim Luttin.
PIECE-A-DAY TIME-BASED PROJECTS artworks made each day for one year
In 2008, I began time-based investigations that attempt to find meaning in the everyday.
The first project, The Temporary Nature of Things (2008) idealistically looked for beauty in the everyday, distilling daily observations into 366 jewellery pieces and artist books.
The second project, These Moments Existed (2013) explored ideas of ambivalence and melancholy, by taking 365 digital photos that inspired a collection of wood and paper contemporary jewellery, which were ambiguous or ephemeral in nature.
The third project, IT’S ALWAYS DARKEST JUST BEFORE DAWN (2015) was a contemporary multi-disciplinary exhibition that explored the significance of handmade objects at a time when people have been engrossed in digital culture and mass-produced products. It explored the creation of authentic representations, starting with digital images, photos and video documentation of Sim's surroundings that informed the creation of tangible contemporary art jewellery.
The latest iteration, MOMENTARILY HERE (2017) continues my search for meaning in everyday moments that I capture on my phone. These curated observations aren't trying to capture the perfect moment in any day, so much as they are an attempt to pause, connect and reflect--if even for the briefest moment. In fact, most of these moments could go unnoticed. They are not necessarily important signifiers that define one day from another, so much as they are the moment I reconnected and took note of my environment. They map a version of my path through a life lived over one year. It is my archived view of my world, significant or not, recorded on Instagram and meticulously archived in folders on my computer, then transformed into objects, photographs and jewellery.
"We live in a highly mediated society where the online world can be argued as replacing a more authentic, tactile one. We constantly upload photos and amass ubiquitous objects to validate our existence and create memories of ideal experiences. We live in the past and create unrealistic expectations for our future, leaving us in a general state of ambivalence and melancholy."
- Sim luttin, 2015
Image: Moment #10: Driving home (36. 5 FEB 17) 2017 sterling silver, annodised aluminium, glass. Courtesy of the artist and Pieces of Eight, Melbourne.
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