M(eat) et al: art jewellery as a means to explore body boundary?

Throughout its 60 year history the art jewellery field has been creatively interrogating jewellery’s craft traditions and its role as social signifier. Den Besten’s (2014) recent manifesto for contemporary jewellery invited art jewellers to re- “Focus on the “why” and “how” of jewelry, on people and jewelry”. Through practice-led research I am investigating the public’s response to the crafting and transformation of food-stuffs, including the flesh of meat and fruits, as materials with which to create a collection of jewellery and decorative wearable artefacts titled ‘M(eat) et al’. There are several art jewellers who explore alternative organic, animal and human matter in their creative practice, such as Marta Mattsson, Eunmi Chun and Stefan Heuser; however, few have gone on to study and analyse the subsequent impact of their designs on the wearer/consumer. In Hindle’s ‘Strange Pleasures’ study (conducted in 2014), where members of the public were invited to experience and engage with a range of art jewellery examples, a participant selected my work to interact with. She stated that “it was almost like that weird attraction/revulsion thing” (Hindle, Colley, Boultwood, 2016 p.304), evidencing threads around abjection (Kristeva, 1984) and body boundary (Rozin et al, 1995) that occur due to the material make-up of the jewellery. As a result of this study, I am exploring ways in which to more effectively promote and exhibit ‘M(eat) et al’ alongside a developing complementary collection of ‘Ambiguous Implements’, to enable an immersive and experiential presentation to the public that more directly questions body boundary.