The award validated my work, giving me a huge boost of confidence!
My Instagram posts attracted support from other artists and the award ‘opened doors’ when I contacted galleries and my mentors.
My time in the Netherlands was brilliant. Away from the day to day distractions, I was truly able to put my head in a different space, and focus only on my research.
In Amsterdam, I visited Galerie Rob Koudijs and I met artist, Thea Tolsma at Galerie Ra which Paul Derrez, the curator, has just closed after 43 years. I also visited the Stedelijk Museum and the Rijksmuseum.
Nijmegan is a 1.5 hour train journey from Amsterdam. Across it’s three floors, internationally renowned Marzee Galerie, curated by Marie Van Den Hout, houses the largest the most eclectic collection of contemporary jewellery in the world.
I had contacted Marie to let her know I was visiting and she welcomed me to the gallery and I began to study the collections. The exhibition, Present, celebrated Marzee’s 40th anniversary: gallery artists had each customised a wooden box into a birthday message – conveying their connection and affection for the gallery, alongside an item of their jewellery and text. This exhibition literally opened up artist’s practices – their ideas, processes and intentions – and underpinned my research and analysis of the rest of the collections: documenting my observations by making notes and photographing objects.
The collections demonstrated artists’ uses of a diverse range of materials and conceptual propositions and this helped me feel more confident about pushing my ideas further and taking more risks.
Back in London in a mentoring session, Lin Cheung encouraged me to articulate my intentions and gave me much food for thought. In mentoring sessions with Zoe Arnold in London and in my studio in St Leonards it became clear through our dialogue that I was over concerned with skills I felt I lacked in relation to many contemporary jewellers. She encouraged me to follow my intuition and value the skills I already have to push my practice further as well as experiment with new processes.
From July, I was working towards a two person installation, ‘between skylight and dust’ with Sharon Haward at hARTslane, London for September. Timing was perfect: due to my research and mentoring I was able to develop and realise a new series of works based on sketches of necklace like structures I had been making for over a year. These works, titled, A Precarious Improvisation have opened up a new way for me to work with found objects in relation to space and place.
