Meshed: An homage to the fly-screen
3 brooches
Copper mesh, sterling silver, vitreous enamel.
Finalist, Contemporary Wearables 23 Biennial Jewellery Award and Exhibition, Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery
There was a soundtrack to summer growing up in a lot of Australia in the 1960’s – the repetitive thwack of the wooden-framed fly-screen door as people moved in and out of the house.
I have developed these small works in an homage and a response to the ubiquity of the fly-screen and its ambiguous qualities of strength and fragility, transparency and opacity, light and darkness.
The mesh, or fly-screen is an extraordinarily effective barrier to insects: it keeps them out of spaces but also traps them inside spaces when the thwack of the closing door is a little slow, or there are the inevitable holes in the screen.
The dirt and dust that builds up on the screen through exposure to the elements is expressed in the partial and complete opacity of the screens in the individual brooches. This opacity speaks to the gloom that lies beyond the door, the dim internal spaces of a hot summer house.
While the fly-screen is certainly not uniquely Australian, it has a resonance in the collective consciousness.
Images: Michelle Bowden, Visuall Photography
Copper mesh, sterling silver, vitreous enamel.
Finalist, Contemporary Wearables 23 Biennial Jewellery Award and Exhibition, Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery
There was a soundtrack to summer growing up in a lot of Australia in the 1960’s – the repetitive thwack of the wooden-framed fly-screen door as people moved in and out of the house.
I have developed these small works in an homage and a response to the ubiquity of the fly-screen and its ambiguous qualities of strength and fragility, transparency and opacity, light and darkness.
The mesh, or fly-screen is an extraordinarily effective barrier to insects: it keeps them out of spaces but also traps them inside spaces when the thwack of the closing door is a little slow, or there are the inevitable holes in the screen.
The dirt and dust that builds up on the screen through exposure to the elements is expressed in the partial and complete opacity of the screens in the individual brooches. This opacity speaks to the gloom that lies beyond the door, the dim internal spaces of a hot summer house.
While the fly-screen is certainly not uniquely Australian, it has a resonance in the collective consciousness.
Images: Michelle Bowden, Visuall Photography