Gemma Draper... Friday 3 September...

At Friday evening I was listing to Gemma Drapers speech at Konstepidemin, the epidemic of art in Gothenburg and it was a good speech, it gives me a lot of
- Yes, that is the way I also work or that is the way I also think…
That is one of the good tings to listen to artists I think, to hear other thinking or/and working more or less the same way that yourself, it’s good to hear and know that sometimes, to remain you of that you aren’t alone and you are not so fucking unique that you sometimes believe…
She was talking about that she isn’t a photographer or a writer but that she need this two elements to explain her work, that is the same for all of us I believe, we need to add works at our works, not only which material we use, more WHY we are doing the way we are doing it and the photo sis to show, to send further, to add the jewellery in a context, sometimes in a context with a body because that is our main object, to dress or to use the body as a mobile showcase…
Gemma had also an interesting and for me a very funny question about one of her work, who is wearing who?! You can use that question at the pic at the top of this post. An amazing jewellery art piece I think and also a very good question.

The 3 photos at the top of this post is taking from Gemmas website, just to show some of the images she was using to talk about and explain her work and working process.

The lines down here are from Gemma herself, trying to explain some of her thoughts and working processes.

The Floating Knot and the Nuptial Suite, or about the source of the new
How intrusively meaningful can an object tend to be?
Having in mind the fact that I’m making objects willing to be used, enjoyed and worn for others, how softly wide, how open and how concretely unfinished can I turn an object without loosing the specificity of their qualities and its preciousness?
I once met a man that used to offer a little juggling show to the improvised beach audience to make some coins. That was long time ago but I can still remember his voice. He found an extremely effective way to keep our attention for the next exercise while crating a vivid expectation. It was just an over repeated sentence, but uttered in hypnotic intonation by his powerful voice. He shouted: …Aaaaaaaanother play!! and the possibility of the new, of the unknown, was invoked, and we took off to the next sketch.
I whish to explore the kind of objects that need the intervention of the wearer to be completed and to become ornaments for his/her body. The object asks to be defined by offering a bunch of uneven possibilities. You are invited to respond by activating your attention and bumping into strangeness and unexpected joy.
Gemma Draper, Summer 2010

http://www.gemmadraper.com/

http://lagerminal.com/

At these blogs you can find some more pics…
http://montserratlacomba.blogspot.com/
http://konstepidemin.blogspot.com/

I was talking to Gemma afterwards and she was a lovely person and a happy one, I hope to see her again, because I think that we had a lot of common, our jewellery pieces is far away from each other I think, but the process when I heard her talk about the way she work/think sound more or less like my own way of working, and that is interesting… She talks about that she doesn’t like collage so much and nevertheless it end up as collage… I felt the same about colour; I think that my pieces will end up in white or at least one colour and it always ending up with a LOT of colours… Strange, may be we all have our inner landscape of colour or collage or sizes or what ever we don’t think we like or want to work with and though we do it, use it and can’t escape from it…