TRANSCEND
/trænˈsend/
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Recent social, political and environmental events have re-shaped how we live and interact with people. Transcend is a new time-based photography and art jewellery project focusing on nature's beauty as a counterbalance to adverse global events: it is a collection that invites quiet repose, presented through a contemporary craft lens.
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ARTISTIC RATIONALE
With the 2020 bushfires, pandemic, social and political unrest in mind, Transcend responds to the difficult times we find ourselves. By bringing nature and beauty back into focus, this project asks, "In times of hardship, what are the things that are important to focus on? What comforts us in challenging times? How can the creation of contemporary art and craft help facilitate personal and cultural recovery and resilience?"
Artists constant questioning, exploration and raising of societal, environmental and political issues, along with their generosity of spirit, help make the world a better place. Art raises awareness, marks time, questions and reflects our values. Art connects communities, shapes culture and fosters wellbeing.
Creativity is vital: it is irreplaceable and one of the most critical aspects of our culture and humanity. How we emerge and respond to the pandemic and other environmental and social challenges, will help define who we are as a community in the coming years.
One response toward recovery is to return to familiar practices as a way to rebuild and reimagine. For me, it is seeking comfort in the process, repetition and searching for beauty in every day where disarming artistry can emerge while crafting something from nothing. To make new forms from the imagination that transcend their original state, creating new and thoughtful objects that reflect time and place.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
TRANSCEND will include a collection of new handmade neckpieces and sculptures, presented alongside digital photographs and a book conceived in the 2020 pandemic and Melbourne lockdown and started in January 2021. I will hang collections of contemporary art jewellery on walls in an apartment space — on shelves and from fixtures, possibly also shown inside custom-made frames.
MATERIALS
Sterling silver, enamel, 18ct gold, rubber, sublimated aluminium, perspex.
*These thoughts and research are a work in progress and will evolve over the next 12 months.
RESEARCH / QUOTES
"To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings. We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in." - Oliver Sacks, 'Altered States', New Yorker, 2012
2021 INSPIRATION IMAGES
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DAILY 2020 IMAGES
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