Skinny Dipping

The deed is done ... studio walls have been filled, sanded and painted; floors cleaned; work hung; symposium presentation delivered ... and breathe!

Thick Skinned (detail) - found crucifix, plastic, felt, aluminium, thread
© Vanda Campbell 2013

Thick Skinned (detail) 
© Vanda Campbell 2013

Left Behind (detail) - found earring (broken), plastic, felt, thread
© Vanda Campbell 2013

Jilted

What happens to earrings when one of the pair is broken?  Is one, or both, left behind, assigned to a dusty corner of a jewellery box or drawer?  If the broken earring no longer functions as  jewellery, can it become something else?

Left Behind is a collection of earrings, one of which has been damaged or broken.  The imperfect one  is dipped and coated in tinted plastic, and hung in a grid opposite it's perfect other half.  The dipped earring no longer functions as jewellery but becomes something more - a body, a form.  The 'perfect' earring loses it's partner, and so is, in turn, left behind.

Studio Work in Progress Jilted © Vanda Campbell 2013 

Studio Work in Progress Jilted © Vanda Campbell 2013

Thick Skinned

In situations where a relationship, sequence, or pattern is taken for granted it is only when change occurs that we are reminded that a pattern exists and what it is supposed to be.  The relationships between the objects we carry or wear, and our body, are examples of just such a relationship.  By breaking the received pattern, I draw attention to it.  I present objects that are almost familiar – familiar materials in unfamiliar forms - and by reordering the received pattern, I aim to question and re-present these relationships.  

Traditional jewellery is often made of metals and gemstones; hard, cold materials that need violent intervention in the form of heating, hammering, and drilling to construct the desirable shapes and forms.  Our bodies, and the skin and clothing that cover them, have very different qualities: flexible, not static; elastic rather than rigid.  To place an item of jewellery, that is a hard, inflexible form on a body or clothing that is in a constant state of movement is surely a mismatch?  

Thick Skinned is an investigation of this mismatch, and comprises a collection of once-wearable found objects.  Broken necklaces, half paired earrings and abandoned trinkets have been dipped and coated in a tinted, liquid plastic.  Although the plastic dries with some flexibility, the articulated jewellery forms are trapped in a new format and become fixed.  A dangly earring no longer dangles, as it is swaddled in its new plastic skin, reminiscent of a pupa.  The colour of this new coating directly acknowledges the relationship between the object and the skin, and begins to visually blur the distinction between them.   Cold, hard materials such as metal and acrylic feel warm to the touch with this new coating, while forms such as necklaces or chains, are reformed into pendants or drops.  

The works in Thick Skinned are presented in a way that hints at wearability, but closer inspection reveals that there is no obvious way of wearing these reworked forms.  There are no evident fixings, or specific ways to hang or connect these works to the body.  They can however be held, stroked, pocketed.  They no longer function as jewellery in the traditional sense, but instead have become forms, or bodies.

Thick Skinned Found object  © Vanda Campbell 2013

Thick Skinned, Found object, plastic, thread  © Vanda Campbell 2013

A not so thick skin

There are a number of contemporary jewellers who are particularly interested in the relationship between the body and jewellery. Arguably, jewellery needs to be worn in order to fulfil its function, so to ignore this relationship would be foolish.  In addition to being worn on the body, jewellery is also often first attached to an item of clothing (eg. a brooch pinned to a lapel).  

For my final major project on the MA, I am exploring the relationship between these three elements - body, clothing and jewellery.  Is there a point at which one can function as another, or the qualities or aesthetics of one be echoed by the other two?

I have started looking at a few of the places in garments that are used to wear or carry objects, such as pockets but have yet to look closely at the body.  Until today.

At the start of the MA I experimented with applying a plastic coating to various found objects, with the initial intent to 'neutralise' their colour and form in some way.  What I discovered however, was that the plastic significantly altered the feel of the objects.  Cold, hard, metal objects became tactile once coated in this new skin, and almost warm or soft to touch.  Perhaps applying a 'skin' to found jewellery forms might be a way of acknowledging the body in this relationship?  Coating a chunky beaded necklace (found in a local charity shop) in an appropriately coloured skin, allows the form to be reinterpreted, and the beaded structure starts to take on the form of something much more skeletal.  I think I like!

Studio work - Skinned Alive  © Vanda Campbell 2013

Studio work - Thick Skinned  © Vanda Campbell 2013

Keeping it dirty

The materiality of stuff continues to intrigue me.  The juxtaposition of leather with glass, plastic and china, linen and metal etc., creates an aesthetic, which has the potential to be more exciting to me than the individual elements.

I have been working on responses to my plastic dipped found objects, and trying to identify my methodology in the early stages of a new body of work.  The responses, also from found objects, have the potential for an awkwardness which is harder to achieve if I have complete control over the form of the objects I use.    This need for awkwardness, clumsiness, even ugliness, is an effective counterbalance to the undesirable response of 'twee' which seems to curse jewellery so easily.  Could this awkwardness be the 'dirty' that Marty St James (Professor of Fine Art at University of Hertfordshire) keeps alluding to?!

The potential for awkwardness is even greater when two responses are joined to create a third response.

White becomes resolution

The paintings of Cy Twombly have been known to move me to tears.  When I first encountered his early works on paper (at an exhibition in Cork Street in the early 80s) I was struck by his mastery of awkwardness - media collided on paper, and his drawings and paintings had a wonderful imbalance that challenged everything I previously understood to be 'right' in art.

Bacchanalia-Fall (5 Days in November) Blatt 4, InvNr. UAB 457, 1977 

Collage, oil, chalk, gouache, on fabriano paper, graph paper, 101.2 x 150.5 cm

Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Museum Brandhorst, München. Leihgeber: Udo Brandhorst. © Cy Twombly

At his recent show at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, there was the opportunity to get close to his sculptures.  Found objects are cast in bronze, and then painted in white household paint, which manages to somehow both conceal the original forms, yet reveal even more of them.  The exhibition notes referred to Twombly's explanation of his use of white paint as his 'marble'.  I love the idea that a material as cheap and everyday as white emulsion paint can allude to the grandeur of Italian marble sculptures of old.

Untitled (Funerary Box for a Lime Green Python) 1954 Cy Twombly

So, how does this relate this to my own practice?  An essential requirement of the found objects I select is ambiguity.  Broken, discarded fragments of someone's once worldly possession, these objects no longer have their original form, and are unable to fulfil their original function. I am intrigued by the notions of value and status, and find myself continually drawn to the work of many European contemporary jewellers, whose practices explore these ideas, amongst others.  One way of challenging the concepts of value and status in jewellery would be to replace precious metals and stones with cheap, everyday materials, such as plastic.  

Found objects, plastic, 2011 Vanda Campbell

Found object, plastic (detail), 2011 Vanda Campbell

Found object, plastic (detail), 2011 Vanda Campbell