Output details

Beneath the Skin: revealing the research that underpins the object.

Maria Hanson, the curator, selected eight participants to bring together diverse research practice and methodologies covering a spectrum of approaches and applications within the field of contemporary metalwork and jewellery. The aim was to present both the work and to articulate the complex and often non-linear creative journey that individual researchers take to get to the final object(s). So the purpose was to reveal the research that underpinned the displayed items and thus to make a significant contribution to the understanding of creativity and cognition.

Astfalck was selected for this show because of her specific artistic and theoretical position. She focuses artistic research activities on wearable and decorative objects, which exist outside the margins of a recognised design culture, signified by a continuous dynamic of rediscovery or recycling of meaning and appropriation. The relationship between the finding, collecting and conceptualising of marginalised artefacts and their meaning were explored in this exhibition through new studio practice work that can exist alongside textual explorations. Her five pieces were presented with the researcher’s earlier PhD thesis, plus 27 essays.

The range and quality of the three venues offered an excellent opportunity for dissemination to different audiences. These were Sheffield Institute of Arts Gallery 25 March – 20 April 201 and Galerie Marzee, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 7 October – 12 December 2012. Galerie Marzee is arguably the largest contemporary jewellery gallery in the world, and one with the most significant reputation. Selected items by Astfalck appear in the 48 page catalogue for the Galerie Marzee show and in the 38 page catalogue for the Sheffield show.

Arts Council England, Sheffield Institute of Arts, and Galvenize Sheffield Festival of Contemporary Metal supported.

One Astfalck piece was acquired by the Susan Cummins Collection, USA.