Materiality of place : an investigation into the makers approach to material and process as a reflection of place within Northern European contemporary jewellery practice
This practice-led research project takes the form of a written thesis, a body of new work
and a public exhibition, which are designed to be reciprocally illuminating. Collectively they
articulate a response to the central question; „How do contemporary jewellery makers transfer the
sensory experience of place into a tangible object?‟ Fundamental to this enquiry is „The
Topophilia Project‟ - a creative participatory research method where the resulting artefacts serve
both as data and represent data. This project involved a group of 16 contemporary makers
creating new work to brief for an exhibition entitled „A Sense of Place; New Jewellery from
Northern Lands‟. The exhibition was held in the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh from
May to September 2012 and formed the primary vehicle with which to both present and explore
research into the contemporary jewellery of Northern Europe.
The new artifacts and first person accounts produced as a result of this research method
enabled an investigation into the maker‟s approach to material and process. These highly
valuable resources allowed for a reading and deciphering of the methods used by the artists
when gathering information from their surrounding environments. Multifaceted methods of
practice are distilled within the project outcomes allowing for a broadened terminology to unfold in
reference to these practices.
This Northern study, rooted in phenomenological understanding and investigated through
the creative process, contributes knowledge to the field from an alternative perspective to the
dominant position of Central European jewellery output. As a geographically focused inquiry it
also adds a necessary alternative outlook to studies focusing on multi-cultural migration. The
resulting body of research outlines an arena of practice and theory in which the work of these
makers can be debated, analysed, and criticised within the broader field, contributing to the
cross-disciplinary discourse on contemporary theories of place of benefit to those interested in
the significance of environmental influence on the creative process