Fran Allison - 21/09/2010

This week we had contemporary New Zealand Jeweller, Fran Allison talk to us about her practice. 

Fran's work consists of interesting materials such as reformatted doilies, children's clothes, crockery, bowls, cake tins, mascara brushes, lollipop sticks, etc... Basically she works with, and creates things that are left over from other things. 

She tends to use pre-existing objects in her work that have a story attached to them.  She then takes that already established story and completely changes the reading of it.  For example, I found that a lot of her pieces had associations to found or discarded objects, which them end up on the body as decorative jewellery pieces. 

From viewing her works I can see that Domesticity plays a big part in her art practice.  This is evident in the types of materials that she uses in her pieces. 

One of my favourite of Fran's pieces is, 'For the Queen of the Bakeoff'.  I love the fact that this crown is made up from cake tins.  Crowns represent royalty and power, and I find it really cool that Fran has take a domestic object and made it into a fabulous piece of work. 

From what Fran explained, I have the understanding that a collaborative work deals with a group of artists, two or more, that work and think together to create and achieve an idea or project.  Collaborative projects can also involve a team effort where one employs the skills of other people outside of their own skill sets, to help execute the idea of what they want to achieve.  In working collaboratively, I think that team members would have to trust and respect one another, and there would definitely have to be an openness and willingness to accepts input from all members. 

Fran herself is a member of the collaborative group 'Weeds', which is made up of four artists, Andrea Daly, Shelly Norton, Lisa Walker, and Fran Allison herself.

Fran explained that the main reason behind the formation of this group was because of 'Bone, Stone and Shell', which globally identified these materials as being definitive of New Zealand jewellery.  'Weeds' wanted to show that this is not the case, and that the New Zealand jewellery practice has a much wider and more interesting variety than just 'Bone, Stone and Shell'. 

"I wonder why someone would choose to be a weed in the garden of jewellery. The answer seems to have something to do with a desire to intensify awareness of everyday things as things in them selves rather than as signs of something else. It is that experimental sensate thing to which Sontag points, the pleasure of touching the familiar and finding it strange, the pleasure found in the weedness of weeds." - Grant Thompson (http://www.fingers.co.nz/exhibitors/Weeds_05.htm)

I thought it was interesting how Fran mentioned the fact that collaboration raises the question of authorship/ownership.   But she explained that her group 'Weeds' works really well together because they all come from different angles, with different skills and ideas so no one clashes. 

Fran also addressed the difference between an art collective and a collaboration.  A collective differs from a collaboration in the way that the artists work together and interact with each other.  From this lecture, what I understand is that a collective is made up of artists that share a work space, and are influenced by each other, but each artist engages in their own individual works. 

So a collective group works alongside each other to gain inspiration, whereas a collaboration works together to produce a specific outcome. 

One group from the lecture that I was really interested in was 'Unnatural/Naturally', who are an collaborative of two Australian contemporary jewellers, Melinda Young, and Lauren Simeoni.  This group seems to delight in finding expressions of the 'natural' in the 'unnatural' (and sometimes vice versa).  I like their work because they focus on ideas of botany and the body.   They manipulate artificial objects such as vintage artificial flowers and beads, and place them alongside silver, gold and wood.  By placing unnatural with the natural, they develop a sense of material contrast. 

One thing I found really interesting, that Fran mentioned, was the fact that this group shared a sketchbook, which travelled back and forth between their studios.   I have never heard of working collaboratively in this way before, and thought it was quite a cool way of working. 

Bibliography:

http://www.collabarts.org

http://www.fingers.co.nz/exhibitors/Weeds_05.htm

http://www.unnaturalnaturally.blogspot.com/