Body Bubbles

My specialist field is contemporary jewellery. As wearable sculpture these two jewellery pieces challenge and extend the definitions of jewellery and its relation to the body; indeed, they make no sense when unworn, as the intimacy between body and object is essential to complete their meaning. Their prime function is to alter the wearer’s stance, rather than to be simple decoration. By forcing the wearer’s body into a dance pose, they ‘wear’ the body by occupying the space around it, rather than being worn by it.

I was commissioned to make them for a catwalk show featuring Flamenco dance by fashion designer Alexander McQueen. The research involved a critical analysis of a flamenco dancer whose movements I documented through drawings and photography, paying particular attention to the arm and hand accents. I then developed designs for a series of objects that captured the space between the arms and the torso that I made in collaboration with specialists. They are large metal structures like bubbles that fit against the torso.

Although catwalk jewellery is often only seen once, these pieces were subsequently selected by curators for exhibitions in Milan (2002) Lucca (2006) and for 'Alchemy - British Jewellery' [http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/1724/], a British Council exhibition touring the Middle East (from Feb 2007).