Alchemy: Contemporary British Jewellery Design

The exhibition design for 'Alchemy' was a requirement to assist the curatorial voice for an exhibition of contemporary jewellery, while being entirely flexible for multiple venues, ranging from shopping malls to galleries and museums.

How exhibition design can further explain objects is central to my research and the ways it can mediate between object and the exhibition environment and audience. The exhibition is the first of its kind to tour the Middle East , i.e. experimental jewellery that uses non-precious material (hence the title Alchemy) and introduces the importance of a conceptual basis for design. It dictated the need for explanatory (if decorative) elements that reflected the aesthetic preoccupations of each designer. The design took into consideration the local constraints – body part stands, for example ,being prohibited in some locations.

The exhibition, showcasing eight British experimental jewellers, was not an attempt to forge links or continuities between the designers, and treated each individually. Each designer was given a large, freestanding case, which contained its own text panel and lighting system creating diverse effects, and each containing within it representations of the jewellers research. For example: the design of the individual cabinets ranged from commissioning lenticular panels to evoke movement (for Naomi Filmer) to tiling the interior of a cabinet to hold an installation of jewelled taps.

The cabinets were constructed to be accessed from above, therefore showing no visible openings: not only sculptural but able to be viewed in the round. The nine units together (eight designers and one introductory section) could create an endlessly flexible series - the solid backs creating visual insulation in busy shopping malls.

Judith Clark
Research Interests

Curating Fashion, Exhibition design, Display History and Theory, Fashion History and Theory, Museology.

Current Research

My research looks at issues surrounding the display of fashion. I am continuing experimental curatorial work carried out since 1997 at the Judith Clark Costume Gallery. I have more recently applied those ideas to museum space/scale. I am interested in how architectural theory can inform theories about the display of clothes and the history of exhibition-making. I am working with Amy de la Haye, on a book for Yale University Press on Curating Fashion (1971 - the present).
Forthcoming exhibition projects include curating and designing The Art of Fashion: Installing Allusions for the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, September 2009; and Roma/Amor (with Maria Luisa Frisa) on the history of Roman Couture commissioned by Alta Roma, Palazzo Venezia, Rome; and 'Words for Clothes' an installation/collaboration with psychoanalyst Adam Phillips (London, 2010). I am currently setting up judithclarkcostume.com workshop, an experimental space dedicated to curating exhibitions to be exhibited online.