Relationships Between Jewellery and Body: Investigating Personal and Interpersonal Body Space with Jewellery

Abstract

This paper outlines studio research developed in response to the question: How can jewellery be used to detect and interrupt both personal and interpersonal body space? I aim to promote dynamic responses from both the viewer and the potential wearer. I have created objects that deliberately fall between the defining borders of jewellery and sculpture and jewellery and installation art. My research focuses on the relationship between jewellery and body space. By drawing on the connection between objects and wearers, I have created visible, touchable, measurable, and expressible circumstances of sensory experience to prove that the body and object interaction and mutual shaping, is a two-way record. At the beginning of this research I was particularly concerned about how the objects I make would trigger cross-cultural understanding and awareness; however, it became apparent that cultural interest forms one part of a more extensive investigation of how the objects I make are activated by those who engage with their form and materials.