Despite being widely considered as art, jewellery remains an unknown field and is therefore quite often excluded from major museum collections. Jewellery thrives instead in an exhibition currently on at the Tilburg-based TextielMuseum. "Body Jewels" includes pieces by Dutch designers, some of them taken from the large collection of the museum or produced for specially commissioned projects.
Rather than being an expensive status symbol, jewellery is interpreted in this exhibition as a way to start and develop an in-depth discourse between the wearable and the unwearable, while erasing the borders between craft, fine art and design and commenting upon wider issues including gender, society and technology. The pieces exhibited are above all the tangible proof of a developing research into textiles that is currently fascinating quite a few contemporary designers out there.
The main point of the exhibition is rediscovering the use of textiles in body ornamentation. In the mid-1960s, a young generation of jewellers turned away from traditional jewellery practice to design accessible pieces, experimenting with materials such as textiles, plastic and rubber.
The use of textiles in jewellery culminated in the 1980s. Several artists with a textile background – such as Mecky van den Brink, LAM de Wolf and Beppe Kessler – gained recognition in the jewellery world and beyond, prompting the TextielMuseum to begin its own jewellery collection.
Jewellery design and textiles have been traditionally associated with crafts and 'women's work', but in more recent years things have changed a bit also thanks to lectures, talks and books that have explored these disciplines in connection with fine art.
The designs included in "Body Jewels" - all of them created by a generation of innovators who have been focusing not just on the craft techniques, but also on the artistic content - prove jewellery is not merely decorative, functional and ornamental, but can aspire to be a corporeal form of art.
The museum took a step backwards and opted to showcase very conceptual pieces from the '80s to provide visitors with a historical perspective. Among the most interesting designs from this decade there are LAM de Wolf's 1982 wearable wood structures, Maria Blaisse's basic yet incredibly functional and almost modular rubber Flexicap (1984) and Beppe Kessler's 1987 PVC painted collar.
Through their pieces these Dutch designers blurred the lines between fashion and art, creating protective and cocooning sculptures that could be used as body adornments or simply be admired in wall-mounted installations.
Some designs look intriguing yet disturbing: Alet Pilon's swan wings (1995), made using artificial fur, feathers and plastic, and his dress from the "After Future" series (1999-2000) with a tubular structure coiling around the body of the wearer providing a sort of soft safe nest for the birds hiding inside it (symbolised by the protruding wings), combine the human and the animal realms.
More recent pieces such as Studio Formafantasma's textile, horsehair and bone China "Colonna" (2007), Winde Rienstra's architectural silk, wood and yarn body structures and Felieke van der Leest's mixed media pieces in which the designer combines plastic toys with crochet obtaining quite surreal and humorous results, play with conceptual, architectural or surreal themes.
In most cases the designers showcased in this exhibition combine contrasting materials such as soft and hard elements, creating their own visual languages from techniques that were never meant to serve as art.
As a whole, there is a lot to discover in this event, between swirling formations that borrow from geometry, origami and architecture, and pieces that look at excess, exaggeration or at the process of assembling different elements and materials to create suggestive forms.
Call them body pieces, sculptural jewellery or decorative art objects, the designs on display here create interesting narratives and tackle abstract concepts or more practical and functional issues, bending and rewriting the norms of beauty to question entrenched ideas and established values.
"Body Jewels" is at the TextielMuseum, Tilburg, The Netherlands, until 15th March 2015. The exhibition includes works by: Maria Blaisse, Ela Bauer, Ellis Belier, Joke Brakman and Claudy Berbéé, Mecky van den Brink, Birgit Daamen, Iris Eichenberg, Studio Formafantasma, Willemijn de Greef, Maria Hees, Marion Herbst, Bart Hess, Lolkje op de Hoek, Beppe Kessler, Digna Kosse, Sonja Landweer, Marijke de Ley, , Lous Martin, Hill Metselaar, Regula Maria Müller, Chequita Nahar, Evert Nijland, Emilie Pallard and Niels Heymans, Alet Pilon, Winde Rienstra, Margot Rolf, Lia de Sain, Jenna Tas, Annemarie Timmer, Thea Tolsma, Miriam Verbeek, Lie van der Werff and LAM de Wolf.
Image credits for this post
All images Courtesy The TextielMuseum, Tilburg
1."Stjerren oan it Fimamint"
Designer: Winde Rienstra
Year: 2013-2014
Material: silk, wood, yarns
Produced in the TextielLab
Collection TextielMuseum
Inv. Nr.: 17546
Photo: Michel Zoeter
2. "Wearable object"
Designer: LAM de Wolf
Year: 1982
Material: textile, wood
Collection TextielMuseum
Inv. Nr.: BK1011
Photo: Hogers & Versluys
3. Collar
Designer: Beppe Kessler
Year: 1987
Material: PVC, painted
Collection TextielMuseum
Inv. Nr.: BK0193
Photo: Anna Beeke
4. Flexicap "circle"
Designer: Maria Blaisse
Year: 1984
Material: rubber
Collection TextielMuseum
Inv. Nr.: BK0225
Photo: Anna Beeke
5. Flexicap "circle"
Designer: Maria Blaisse
Year: 1984
Material: rubber
Collection TextielMuseum
Inv. Nr.: BK0225
Photo: Anna Beeke
6. ZT (Swan wings)
Designer: Alet Pilon
Year: 1995
Material: artificial fur, feathers, plastic
Dimensions: h97 x br124 x d40 cm.
Collection TextielMuseum
Inv. Nr.: BK0486
Photo: Cord Otting
7. No title, from the series "After Future"
Designer: Alet Pilon
Year: 1999-2000
Material: artificial fur, animal material, paper,
steel, mixed materials
Collection TextielMuseum
Inv. Nr.: BK0876b
Photo: Cord Otting
8. "Colonna"
Designer: Studio Formafantasma
Year: 2007
Material: textile, horsehair, bone China; paper
Collection TextielMuseum
Inv. Nr.: BK1088a=b
Photo: Formafantasma
9. Brooch "The Pregnant Panda Bearmaid"
Designer: Felieke van der Leest
Year: 2006
Material: wool, polyester, polyamid, viscose, felt,
gold, plastic
Collection TextielMuseum
Inv. Nr.: BK1029a=b
Photo: Tommy de Lange commissioned by TM
10. Brooch "The Pregnant Panda Bearmaid"
Designer: Felieke van der Leest
Year: 2006
Material: wool, polyester, polyamid, viscose, felt,
gold, plastic
Collection TextielMuseum
Inv. Nr.: BK1029a=b
Photo: Tommy de Lange commissioned by TM
11. - 13. Overview exhibition "Body Jewels"
Photographs: Josefina Eikenaar commissioned by TM
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Comments