I truly have no idea what I have done since I wrote my last blog. I’ve been looking back at Meret Oppenheim’s compositions, marvelling at Keith Sonnier’s colours and neons, trawling through Hilary Mantel’s latest novel The Mirror and the Light.
The daily explorations of living a life within the boundaries of a world pandemic are extraordinary. It’s a polarising state of denial and reality.
It doesn’t exist.
It doesn’t affect me.
My immune system is good.
It’s a conspiracy.
I’m going to die because I’m old.
I’m going to die because some idiot believes the first four.
The app doesn’t work.
The app does work.
Masks don’t work.
Masks do work.
WHO can’t be trusted.
WHO can be trusted.
etc. So – trusting the sane, ignoring the politics, opinions and not digging too deep into the social. Going from using my app, to…what’s the point, to…should I go out at all?, to…should I be standing here with all these people in one place? And, what does this have to do with making jewellery? We had a show of existing work, post lockdown. Peter Deckers as summed it up nicely here.
Handshake in Hamilton
Weasel Gallery
8 July – 1 August 2020
https://handshakeproject.com/handshake-in-hamilton-2/
https://handshakeproject.com/handshake-6/hs6-exhibitions/
https://klimt02.net/events/exhibitions/handshake-hamilton-weasel-gallery
On our way to Hamilton, about 1.5hour drive south from Auckland.
It was a beautiful cold day. Michael Parekowhai’s ‘Tongue of the Dog’ 2016, has pride of place outside the Waikato Museum.
https://meshsculpture.org.nz/project/tongue-of-the-dog
Reminiscent of the industrial containers driving in to Hamilton and empty shop windows with colourful fabric…
So many delights at the Waikato Museum. It’s a veritable feast.
And finally to the Weasel Gallery. A great turnout.
Attai Chen 27 July 2020
Finally we were able to make a time that worked for us both. We talked family this time, a little bit of history and relationships. He asked me what I liked from the Weasel Gallery show and observed I like the graphic – not surprising given my background in typography and layout.
Attai asked if I had seen Otto Kunzli’s 1980 “Gold Makes you Blind’ bracelet. It is a ball of gold in a rubber bracelet. He said to be minimal you have to pay attention to every detail. I think I finally get what Pull means now in Push/Pull in Renee Bevan’s workshop. Minimise to increase power. I’m still like a child with colourful toys and attracted to the ‘more’. I admire the minimal but it does not feed me. I find it is not necessary for a spiritual connection. Definitely not a minimalist – a gratifying realisation.
We discussed exposing, hiding and breaking through as categories for my work. We talked of rubber dipping, why the heat shrink, why plastic. I’m interested in the ‘real’ materials…being coated in the heat shrink material…ceramic/rock/glass so they’re not accessible to the touch…drawing attention to people using ‘real’ materials…for adornment…is it ok, or should we leave them alone? In situ? The ‘non real’ materials…plastic….things we hate so much but use every day….and altering them in their form to become just the colour, which of course, I respond to in a different way myself. My relationship to this bright object is familiar and very non natural, but gives me some joy and I question, really, what is natural?
We talked about the imbalance of nature. And my inability to focus. Still jumping all over the place. I have been experimenting with a myriad of my found objects/plastics. I am to question ‘what do you do with it now’? and ‘what is the next stage?
So, I am to progress one of my experiments into a necklace, and have to think about it’s wearability, how it sits on the body etc. And choose fewer elements for the story. Confronting.
