Thanks to Klimt02 for this post.

At the age of 35 she knew she was good

Walker’s jewellery is delightfully risky, a poetry of found objects treated with serious intent as well as playful humour.In the face of Walker’s willingness to transform pretty much anything into jewellery, I find myself scurrying to keepup. It is an exhilarating ride if you can accept the terms on which Walker bases her practice, and if you are happy to keep bumping into the limits of the preconceptions you hold about what jewellery is. One thing I have never struggled with is Walker’s commitment and sense of purpose. And I have never had a problem seeing how Walker’s jewellery remains jewellery, no matter what crazy stunts it might seem to be pulling. Unwearable, the title of her book, nicely points to her aggressive challenge to tradition on a material, conceptual and sometimes even practical level. Some of Walker’s jewellery is pretty unwearable, but the fact that we keep asking ourselves what would happen if we put it on is important. That is the connection to jewellery that Walker holds as central to her practice. The Rubbish brooches make this point well. In 2004 Walker wrote that ‘I worked with some materials from the rubbish bin in my workshop. I wouldn’t usually do this as for a material to actually reach the rubbish bin, really means it is rubbish.’ Rules exist, otherwise how could a material be judged and placed into the bin in the first place? But it is marvellously typical that Walker can’t leave limits alone, even ones she creates herself. It would be possible for rubbish to be mistaken for a Walker brooch but this is not because her jewellery is artless. It’s because found objects can sometimes take on the right qualities to become a good example of her work. There’s plenty of bite in Walker’s work. Sure, that is just a bad pun to allow me to introduce the brooch made out of a stack of plastic vampire teeth, but this is exactly the kind of object that keeps me interested in Walker’s jewellery. Conceptually it is part of Walker’s ongoing investigation of the readymade, of what can be transformed into jewellery, and what kind of intervention is required to make it happen. This is a pretty minimal recipe: just lots of teeth, simply stacked together, and fixed in place by a wire that also allows the stack to be worn. It’s simple, but the end result of a process that has been refined over a decade. But even more striking, this brooch is funny and crazy. Protruding from the wearer’s chest, this is affronting and foolish at the same time. It’s an act of agression that has no teeth, all bark and no bite. It’s funny, clearly a joke, but as a piece of jewellery it is also serious. Walker wants us to laugh, act like it doesn’t matter, but also make the ultimate commitment and put it on, take it seriously enough to wear it. This is like a joke that you don’t quite understand; if you laugh, is it at your own expense? Since I can’t determine exactly what she means, I have to keep checking my response, thinking about it, changing my mind. Which means her jewellery really does have teeth after all.

by Dr Damian Skinner

Writers Kevin Murray and Damian Skinner will present two illustrated talks about Murray’s concept of ‘rich and poor craft’ in contemporary jewellery from Australia and New Zealand.

Baroque ‘n’ Roll: the forest versus the street in contemporary Australian jewellery. In this talk Kevin Murray will discuss concepts of rich and poor craft drawn from the alternative classical and modernist strategies that have characterised much of recent southern arts.

Native/Natural, Settler/Silver: Considering Murray’s Theory of Rich and Poor Craft in Contemporary Jewellery from Aotearoa. In this talk Damian Skinner argues that Murray’s dialectic of rich craft and poor craft in Australian jewellery can be mapped very differently within contemporary New Zealand jewellery.

Dr Kevin Murray is a writer who lives in Melbourne, Australia. His book, Craft Unbound: Make the Common Precious, was published by Craftsman House in 2005. Dr Damian Skinner is a writer who lives in Gisborne. His book, Between Tides: Jewellery by Alan Preston, is being published by Random House in October 2008.

Thursday 2 October, 6.15pm, Room WE 230 AUT campus. The lecture theatre can be found via the driveway at gate 4, cnr Govenor Fitzroy Place & St Paul St, Auckland City.