Junk: rubbish to gold

The aim of this paper is to explore the entangled social relations of a specific commodity as its meanings and materiality transform, shifting between sites of disposal, production and consumption, crossing and expanding upon the boundaries of rubbish, transient and maybe even durable as crafted art. Our paper investigates issues concerning the conceptual development and operational intricacies towards staging JUNK: rubbish to gold, a performative and participatory installation project, which is motivated by social and ecological concerns, questioning the intrinsic value of design and the value of recycled and upcycled materials. The project aims to experiment with innovative and collaborative design methodologies and a playful exploration of ideas of community economies and associated activities of exchange, bartering, gathering, earning, harvesting and giving. In today’s society when we think of re-using we imagine the recycling of packaging and unwanted consumer objects, we think of the up-cycling of consumer leftovers into a new and desirable luxury, but we do not however think very often about the changing status of the object and the relation between monetary value and design value. In our visually biased society we focus on the object, the material. Recycling sees conversion of one object to another, ideally from unwanted to desired, but mostly in terms of new consumer product ready to buy. JUNK: rubbish to gold seeks to shake this presumption through making the entire process of creation the ‘work of art’, from material selection to (re)construction, the focus is shifted from the object to the social interactions and agency usually hiding behind it

Sting of passion

A new exhibition of contemporary jewellery by 12 up-and-coming international jewellery artists opens at Manchester Art Gallery this July. Curated by Manchester-based jewellery artist Jo Bloxham, the exhibition features new conceptual works of jewellery by artists from as far afield as the USA and Mexico. All the works on display have been inspired by Pre-Raphaelite paintings from Manchester Art Gallery’s prestigious collections. The paintings have all been selected by the exhibition curator, Jo Bloxham and include Pre-Raphaelite favourites such as Arthur Hughes’ Ophelia and Rossetti’s The Bower Meadow and Astarte Syriaca. The works portray women as a femme fatale, a seductress, and in some cases, purely as an object of beauty. Bloxham comments that each of the jewellers has responded individually, the works have provoked some strong reactions, and astonishing results: “The jewellers have created an exciting body of work using a diverse selection of materials, from gold and garnets to concrete and broken glass. The Sting of Passion is an opportunity to explore an area of jewellery design rarely seen in the UK.” Polish jeweller, Arek Wolski has added modern irony to his work for Eve Tempted by John Stanhope. Playing on words, Wolski has created a t-shirt brooch, changing the phrase ‘Last Forever’ to a more cynical ‘Lust Forever’. French jeweller, Benjamin Lignel found The Bower Meadow by Dante Gabriel Rossetti deeply unsettling. Lignel says “Here are the real desperate housewives: typecast for maximum excitement. Rossetti’s dancing beauties live the test-tube lives of neutered she-monsters in a tree-lined water-tank.” Nanna Melland from Germany has created a fine, gold chain, to sit around the waist of Rossetti’s Astarte Syriaca in the form of a new girdle