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Queer Exhibition
Posted on 10 May 10:00
The Queer exhibition. An exciting opportunity providing artists and makers in the LGBTQIA+ community a dedicated space to showcase their work.
For many of the exhibitors, jewellery is an extension of their identity. Artists explore themes of iconography as a stance of solidarity and celebrate the reclamation of ‘Queer’ as a term of togetherness. Contemporary jewellery making techniques allow designers to utilise the medium to express their inner thoughts with something tangible and wearable. To channel that energy into objects that are beautiful yet poignant, and we are privileged to hold space for these artists to do so.
Below we've included a shortened version of each of the artists statements to allow you to get to know a little bit about each designer with dedicated 'meet the maker post to follow throughout the exhibition.
Holly Heron-Chambers
My practice explores the way in which fashion is an extension of the self. By re-examining subcultures through the lens of reflective nostalgia and melding the aesthetic signifiers of the ‘ned’, goth, and cowboy together, I extract the queerness present within them all to create my own narrative through personal story-telling. This collection expresses my own unique queer identity through objects in a meaningful and universal way. Through juxtaposing elements and materials such as acrylic, silver, leather, and nylon, the collection transforms the semiotics of existing subcultures and creates something contemporary. This is a collection of my own neo-western inspired artefacts, influenced by styles from my past and present. This collection is a love letter to the outcasts, it represents fluidity and re-examines fashion in a playful way.
Ecco Robinson by Carlota Mercado
I have spent a lot of time exploring art as a method of expressing my identity. I feel that as I grow and progress I understand jewellery as a way to raise my voice, to tell stories that belong to us as LGTBIQ+ people. It is the place where I find myself in the most intimate and, at the same time, most exposed way. In my work I try to make our collective visible, I use images as a symbol of vindication and in memory of all those who fought yesterday for what we can be today.
"Stonewall" earrings are born from the desire to claim what you are, what you love, and the right to freedom in all forms. The main shape of the earrings incorporates an inverted triangle, giving them a symbolic content. The resin image speaks graphically of the beginning of a battle that led to LGTBIQ+ Pride Day.
Ruby Taglight
Ruby Taglight LDN has curated an all-female line up for Diana Porter. The sculptural pieces aim to shine light on magical tales discovered within our history, told from a female perspective. Each piece has been devotedly hand carved out of wax following extensive research of a chosen myth, artefact, piece of architecture. The details are to be explored as though one were discovering a ruin or listening to a story being told for the first time. There is a lab-grown ruby set into every piece, as a signature.
Mark McLeish
My Practice is centred around identity questions that surface from my making methodology rooted as a queer artist as collector, material led witch and art jeweller. Here works collide the active inherent idea of ‘Jewelleryness’ as spells and a seen mobile space to present progressive storytelling.
Laik Ecola
Laik Ecola is a London based, genderqueer artist and jeweller with roots that run deep in the moorlands of the Yorkshire Dales and Jungles of Papua New Guinea.
As a child Laik was surrounded by talismanic tribal adornments from their mother’s village in New Guinea in their household.
This early influence and their finding their own identity with the LGBTIQ+ community impacted their work later in life and now they create pieces, which much like the adornments they grew up around, embolden, celebrate and signify the status and identity of the wearer.
Esteban Erosky
What was and what is my search for identity is a reflection of what my work is, a technical and aesthetic search to be able to express what I am and what I feel, always representing honestly and without fear of saying it. I want my jewelry not to be discreet, I want it to stand out in its environment, to be a strident detail that draws attention and makes people read it, to be violent iconographically and with color accents, to speak strongly about who we are, proudly, without fear or shame and many times I do it sarcastically, after all, we are temporary objects within an eternity.
Lukas
My creative process mirrors my inner journey of discovery and exploration of my queerness.
Releasing of rooted constraints,
Unleashing of the repressed,
Giving in to experience,
Realising potential,
Trusting intuition,
Transmuting,
Letting go.
My collection is a study of the darkness of uncertainty - in relation to all things unknown, unfathomable and mystical, as well as the inner journey that awakens in its presence.
We wanted to provide space for discussion, to spark curiosity and an opportunity to learn and educate as well as visually excite. The term ‘Queer’, once pejorative, now slowly being reclaimed and with Pride by the LGBTQIA+ community. We have sourced and cited some of the resources we found useful for this exhibition and expanded our personal understandings of the term in the links below:
The {Queer} + {Metals} digital project and exhibition has further resources such as; ‘How do ‘queerness’ and metalsmithing intersect?’, a discussion panel and a personal essay by Rebekah Frank following their digital residency and Instagram research project.
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/ - provides a myriad of information and support for the LGBTQ+ community here in the UK.
https://www.them.us/story/what-does-queer-mean, ‘9 LGBTQ+ People Explain How They Love, Hate, and Understand the Word "Queer”’. Written by Alexander Cheeves, August 2019.
This is an ongoing discussion and integral to our beliefs so please feel free to comment further sources, if you feel comfortable to do so.
