Part NMC/1995/v3 - Flight Mask (Version 3)

"Flight Mask" from degree show collection 'Kinetic Nature' made from milk bottle plastic and metal.

Artist's statement on "Kinetic Nature" collection: Biomimicry, which is innovation inspired by nature, through emulating, ethos and reconnection is the focus of this body of work. These jewellery pieces heighten the presence of nature in the wider landscape and its relationship to the human body, through texture, form, repetition, transformation and movement. The Caddisfly Larva use materials found around them to make intricate adorning cocoons in order to blend with their surroundings and in some respects personifies the idea of a sustainable existence. During the Covid-19 lockdown, this same ethos has been applied to practice, in giving new life to discarded objects, transforming these into body adornments. Milk bottle plastic, for example, has beautiful, ethereal and translucent qualities, that are used here in interactive sculptural pieces. It gives a new purpose to the continued existence of this material, transforming it from an everyday product to a desirable object. The concept of biomimicry sits usefully in Michel Serres’ understanding of human-to-non-human relations. In ‘The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies’ (2008), Serres argues that our sense-experiences should be foregrounded in social and cultural life and that humans should recall from nature how to adapt and trust our intuitive bodily impressions. In this respect, the pieces of jewellery presented here are sculptures intended to become animated once positioned on the body; to become an extension of the body. As nature changes it gifts us with fleeting phenomena and these moments are captured in these activated body adornments, such as the life cycle of the dandelion head changing first from yellow to translucent, and then as motion, like that of a bird in flight.