What is it? What happened? Why am I talking about it?
I want to focus this week on my Design for Living: The Domestic Objective Elective. I had opted for this theme due to the ongoing themes in my practice those of misogyny, violence against women, prejudice in the medical profession and general systemic failures against women as I see a connection to this and to my previous work. I also wanted to learn new skills hence opting for Jewellery, I’m a great consumer but never a serious maker.
Over the summer I started to think about options about the home and an object and I came to consider the board game Cluedo – it’s a home and people get murdered in it…Professor Plumb, in the Dining Room with a piece of Rope! The game uses 6 murder weapons, a dagger, a spanner, a piece of rope, a gun, a candle stick and a lead pipe; all of which could be classed as a domestic item which are also weapons. At a push the game itself is a domestic item! I wanted to test the theory that all of these items are actually used in domestic violence crime and murder in the home. I sourced several government reports from the UK Office of National Statistics (O.N.S Stripe, 2021) the American Public Health Association (Sorenson & Wiebe, 2004) & from the Scottish Government (Scottish Government, 2021). As well as using hands, fists and feet the reports validated the game of Cluedo with one additional domestic item featuring heavily, the hammer, which today would be more likely than a piece of lead pipe!
One way of representing these ‘weapons’ by jewellery is through the charm bracelet which historically conveyed symbols and meaning. Principally they were historically to ward off evil spirits, bring good fortune, and commemorate good times, (Charmco-Anon, 2020) which in itself, considering the subject matter, is an oxymoron!! More so in recent times with the advent of the Tiffany Charm Bracelet and the Pandora bracelet one could consider them to be a decorative item rather than a talisman (Harris, Unknown ). I also considered other types of protective jewellery such as the Hamza, Evil Eye and the semi precious stone Agate (Annabelle, 2020). My final stop was to consider what colour repelled evil, it’s blue (Mitsopoulou, Unknown). All of this research provided a good grounding for the start of the course.
At my first lecture last week and attending my first two jewellery workshops I am not sure at this stage if moulded classic jewellery will be an option and whether it will be too confining, we wait to see. What I do keep being drawn to is the hammer a domestic item that can build a house and also in the context of domestic violence destroy a home! For that matter Build a House, Destroy a Home, Life! What I have to figure out is how literally I want to represent this or do I hint at it symbolically in my piece?
Interpretation – Using the work of others to illuminate – What is important, relevant, interesting, useful? How is it similar to or different from others? How can it be explored, explained using contemporary theories? Outcome – What have I learnt from this?
What I’ve realized as I begin the sample making and experimentation phase in the jewelry workshop is how important it is that I carry a concept in my head. I will keep an open mind but the themes of domestic violence, where often victims are built up to be broken down stays with me. As a starter for ten what I see when I visualize this concept is a house with a hammer crashing through the roof, just like that Shark in Oxford that I saw in 2021.
This piece was designed by John Buckley and is called the Headington Shark. The shark is a metaphor for the dropping of a bomb (Wikipedia, 2022).
What could my metaphor be? I also visualize large windows so you can see inside and there is a person crouched in the corner with blood dripping down the walls. This is the, ‘Happy House’, Siouxsie and The Banshees sung about with sarcasm and irony (Siouxsie & Severin, 1980):
This is the happy house
We’re happy here in the happy house
To forget ourselves and pretend all’s well
There is no hell
hen asked if Happy House was a cynical song, Siouxsie said, ‘It is sarcastic. In a way, like television, all the media, it is like adverts, the perfect family whereas it is more common that husbands beat their wives…’ (Wikipedia, 2022).
I was thinking that is the house was lit from within it would be easier to see what is being played out…. BINGO, we have a TEA LIGHT HOLDER!!! With its Japanese origins to warm tea (Unknown, 2022), there is a nice link to my last work with the teapots. It is a domestic item, an item that moved from the functionality of warming tea to a decorative item that gives ambience to interiors, something safe, something innocuous, so what about a tealight framed as a house, a quaint house just like one I have at home that I could subvert. There’s no Happy House here!!! It led to create a mind map.
There’s been one other stop on my exploration of this theme and that’s why don’t victims of domestic abuse leave? I watched a powerful TED talk by Leslie Morgan Steiner and it made me think about how a home in some instances must feel like a prison. How a victim feels powerless and scared to leave and re-build a new life. How the abuser slowly breaks their victim down until they believe that they are worthless. Bars on a window. A woman in a cage. A cage fighter who has lost all competitive edge.
How will it influence my future work?
I have to keep working this concept. Whilst looking for images of houses, to stimulate inspiration for a possible design, I happened across the work of Frank Gehry and the architectural movement of deconstructivism (Craven, 2021). This may very well provide the twist I am looking for. Yes, it’s a house but maybe not one you can imagine living in. To a victim the house doesn’t feel like a safe place, it is disorientating. Life does not follow set norms it is being deconstructed by the perpetrator.
Through my research I have also found out that the Maggie’s Cancer Centre in Dundee was designed by Gehry (Schmertz, 2009) see below as a creative space for healing.
