“Community Values”

 

For this piece I wanted to explore the journey of the necklace that we were given as a starting point. Who made it? What does this piece mean to them and what does it mean to us?

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To the people that make them they are an income, healthcare, an education, a way of life, community. To the fashion industry and large companies that employ these workers it is a business, an empire fueled by constantly changing styles and trends. For the people that buy these necklaces; for the fashion conscious consumer this necklace is a commodity, an object that is worn to decorate an outfit, an inexpensive throw away item that will probably be forgotten about within six months.

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From start to finish they are very different worlds with very different values and yet they rely on each other, one bound to the other.

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The mass production of fashion jewellery is repetitive and mechanical, and I wanted to explore this repetition in the making of this piece, but to introduce a slower pace that is far removed from the speed of production in which this piece would have originally been subject to. I worked with the materials almost taking them back to their raw form, stripping back the glitz and glamour and looking deeper into the origins of their starting point, revealing their true values.