Aural, Oral and Digital Gems
digital print on acrylic with luster laminate
23 X 28 inches each

HARDWEAR    Gold is a material imbued with myth. Its brilliance, indelibility and uncorrodable surface have come the signify beauty, purity, and immortality. To appropriate these qualities cultures have adopted the application of gold to the body. This reflects a desire to amend the imperfections and impermanence of the physical human form. In modern societies it can be argued that jewelry is worn as a visual, aesthetic, extension of the internal desire for perfection. In contrast, I present gold jewelry as a vehicle to amplify taboo aspects of the body. I fabricate gold adornment to highlight where the interior body transgresses its boundaries making organs, imperfections and diseases visible. The form of the adornment often reflects malignant excrescences, such as rupturing membranes or cancerous growths. These gleaming outgrowths cause bodily residues to be shed as they spread orifices and tear skin. When the beauty of gold is alloyed with the seeping body the objects become both intriguing and repulsive.

In my work, applying and wearing gold suggests a struggle between the unrefined body and the desire for perfection. The body endures pain in an attempt to recast itself, through the wearing of the intrusive gold adornment. The bodily configurations appear absurd and require physical restraint twitching,wincing, or swallowing. The contortions caused by the grotesque adornment counter the display of gold as perfection. Hard Wear is a combination of jewelry based objects and digital records of performance actions. I use gold leaf as well as electroforming to make the objects and use digital video and photographs to record their insertion and wearing. The photographs allow me to amplify the textures of the skin and gold where as the videos show the reflexes of the body against the discomfort of the adornment. I display the video on small LCD screens and the photographs as portraits in conjunction with the adornment and relics of the actions. The presentation of the work oscillates between commodity and medical specimen mimicking the duality of the objects.