See the most recent posts from all of the Handshakers
My second collaborator was Sondra Bacharach, a Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy Programme at Victoria University whose research is in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Sondra’s speed and ability to make connections between my tangential ideas was a thing of beauty. Our conversations were reciprocally fertile in growing new leads and our mutual admiration for the…
The start point for my collaboration was the title Tool as Jewel, building on previous explorations of utility coupled with economics, the natural environment and the object, it also gave room to extend and translate earlier research into materials, techniques, wearable objects, images and text. It offered a brilliant opportunity to collaborate with several people; two writers,…
I began the HS2 project in 2014 with the aim of exhibiting as much as possible to accelerate my practice after a hiatus for parenthood. After more exhibitions, masterclasses and jewellery travel opportunities than I could count, I definitely feel accelerated. I determined that I am my first audience, but that I have a real…
A small insight into the book that we produced – words and images are the product of conversations between Nichola and I, with print and layout designed by Aaron. ‘what is the nature of the breath which moves within an inanimate object, that forms the resonance with the audience, the intimate, the voodoo of negative…
First Handshake3 exhibition at Objectspace Gallery, Auckland? Check! I presented twenty works representing different stages of the evolutionary process – from very early beginnings (2 polystyrene balls connected by a piece of steel wire) to the most recent iterations (black folded and connected aluminium pieces – one to be worn on the face and the…
A few weeks before Ruudt left for Japan we had a Skype chat to talk about presentation options for the Object space show. We ended the conversation having agreed a general framework for me to flesh out and test. Our starting point, suspended works over rubbish bins to represent the knife-edge of survival versus extinction…
Living in an engineering family allows me to recognize the importance of tools and the ability to create tools that make making a little easier. A while back I also had an interesting discussion with jeweler Roy Mason about adapting what is accessible to create working supports in your studio. Not everything that helps you…
My NASA Earth Facebook feed tells me there has been a few Perseid meteors showering down on earth this week. There have also been quite a few Meteors flying around my house.
Here are the finished images of Ben and my collaboration at Objectspace. The chair I selected and modified using parts from Ben’s chair is the floral print chair entitled Transplant/67503288 and Ben’s chair is the steel and timber stool entitled Transplant/5084110. When we installed the works we wanted them to seem like the two chairs…
Here in New Zealand I have been busy making rocks. In Germany Henriette writes verse, and by some kind of providence my jewellery and Henriette’s words sit quite nicely together. Actually no, there was no divine intervention here – our particular collaboration is directly related to the two years I was mentored by Henriette during…
Exhibited at Objectspace as part of the Handshake3 collaboration exhibition; Harrell Fletcher and Renee Bevan, ‘What the moon looked like the evening she was born’, 2016 A collection of objects and their stories contributed from friends, family and strangers working in the Objectspace neighbourhood and further afield.
What does the space between the feminine and the masculine look like? This question to myself has drawn me towards a statement below about the work of Louise Bourgeois; ‘Through the use of abstract form and a wide variety of media, Bourgeois dealt with notions of universal balance, playfully juxtaposing materials conventionally considered male or…
Handshake 3 at Objectspace, Auckland. July -August 2016 Under the the umbrella of an exhibition that is about collaboration, Nichola and I decided to explore new territory together and create a kind of document – one that charts the space of getting to know and work with one another. Our underlying thread was of fragments, including exchanges…
True collaboration is a very tricky thing. Its also not every bodies cup of tea, and understandably so. It means giving up control and knowing the partners working processes very well, not to mention trusting their intellectual capacity. Forced collaboration is more or less impossible and only chance can save the parties involved from…
For our Objectspace piece, Liesbeth and I are focussing on the sensory action of touch, taking the opportunity to play with the taboo against touching that is usually enforced in a gallery setting. We both enjoy the signage employed to remind us of this and other restrictions on viewers. This from the British Museum: Liesbeth…
I have been meaning to experiment with aluminium to see how it compared to tin and zinc. Problem was that we didnt have any aluminium cans in the recycling bin so I put that on the shelf for a while. Luckily our friends from up the road came round for dinner and left me 4…
Two days before exhibition opening and #0067 stakes a claim. #0069 is born…
HANDSHAKE 3 