Thinking Jewellery

I've been researching the connections between jewellery and identity, and have found some useful insights in a selection of published lectures from the annual Thinking Jewellery symposium, held at the Trier University of Applied Sciences in Idar-Oberstein, Germany.
  
One contributor, Professor Tilmann Habermas represented (as in re-presented) "the special importance of cherished objects for the formation of personality, and showed the enormous contribution they make to the subjective and societal construct of the self". For cherished, I read treasured, and for subjective and society construct of the self, I read identity.  I need to consider how my found object treasures not only represent identity, but become part of the identity.  This connects to a collection of care labels I made last year, in response to the Threads of Feeling exhibition at the Foundling Museum.  I have been fascinated by labels in clothing for some time, and find myself frequently returning to the format of trapping drawings or objects on one side by stitch.  Labels, and particularly found labels, definitely need exploring further.  

Linen, stitch, found object, 2010 © Vanda Campbell

Linen, stitch, found object, 2010 © Vanda Campbell

Linen, stitch, found object, 2010 © Vanda Campbell
From the Care Label Collection, 2010

Lostings and Foundlings

A birthday trip to London, and a chance to visit some exhibitions that have been on my "to do" list for a while. First stop was the Foundling Museum in London, where the stars of the show proved not to be the eagerly anticipated Tracey Emin and Paula Rego exhibits, but small tokens of love, left by mothers for their child as they handed them over to the care of the Foundling Hospital. Sadly, these tokens never made it to their intended recipient, and the poignancy of this loss was a powerful contrast to their understated beauty and charm.

So, this got me thinking ... maybe I can find some way of relating my found treasures to this story. Exhibited on a gallery or studio wall they are foundlings. As they are removed from this faux exhibit to be worked on, added to, explored, does the space left behind become a losting?

Studio shot, 2010