Reflection and story-telling - 2
Lieta Marziali Contemporary Jewellery
Holt, England
Phoney: On Vainglory and the Affliction of Affectation, Lieta Marziali2018
NECKLACE (fake pearls, fake phone, fake shoe, fake gold beads, fake gold chain, recycled silver)
'As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure.'
'Art is a quality that permeates an experience; it is not, save a figure of speech, the experience itself. Esthetic experience is always more than esthetic. In it a body of matters and meanings, not in themselves esthetic, become esthetic as they enter into an ordered rhythmic movement toward consummation. The material itself is widely human ... The material of esthetic experience in being human – human in connection with the nature of which it is a part – is social. Esthetic experience is a manifestation, a record and celebration of the life of a civilization, a means of promoting its development and is also the ultimate judgment upon the quality of a civilization. For while it is produced and enjoyed by individuals, those individuals are what they are in the content of their experience because of the cultures in which they participate.'
John Dewey, Art as Experience, New York: Penguin Group USA Inc. (original © 1934, Perigee 2005 edition, pp. 339 and 357-8)
Norfolk Fields: On the Alchemy of Before, Between and Beyond, Lieta Marziali2018
BROOCH (sheep's wool, shotgun cartridge case, wood, rusty wire, 18ct gold, iron wire, stainless steel)
Sheep, shotgun cartridges and fence wire are a staple of the Norfolk countryside. And so are the famous golden treasures of Queen Boudica's Iceni.
But we are often the perpetrators and victims of casual observation. A find is not just a find, but a frozen moment in time, the snapshot of an experience, braiding together body, landscape and the acts of walking and foraging. It is when we take the time to awaken our consciousness to this moment that we we begin asking: what is the cycle of life and death, of disappearance and reappearance, of extraction and refinement and then of deposition and discovery of these objects? And what is ours?
Predator, Lieta Marziali2018
BROOCH (Found plastic objects and toy cowboy, copper, recycled silver, stainless steel, tie pins)
“Predator” confronts how history is written and perpetrated, and how knowledge is created by power structures. How do we re-write innocent games so familiar to our childhood which still manage to hide narratives of genocide and dispossession after so many generations?
I originally found the three pieces of plastic on the same beach walk and immediately I thought of creating a piece about a cowboy set against the sunset, a fun little story bringing back memories of childhood games and Lucky Luke comic books. It was only when I hit a technical snag that I had time to reconsider what exactly it was that I was so innocently trying to portray.
As I mounted the pieces together, the yellow fragments revealed itself to be even more fragile than I thought. Any undue pressure, and I could lose it, therefore risking losing the whole piece. This is a situation that I am often forced to remind people of when discussing the