Jewellery Manifest; Jewellery, Objects, Language and Other Thoughts is a 250-page book released in September 2019. Utilizing but subverting the traditional paperback format, it employs distinct chapters headings, concrete prose, image, anthropology and philosophical/theoretical discussion critiquing the past 10 years of my own practice and theorising more broadly about the role of jewellery and language.

The texts take my practice as a personal, subjective and original starting point and reference for exploring the themes of jewellery, text/language and object. Speaking to a lack of written artist critique within the field of jewellery it looks at examples within fine art as influences (On Not Knowing, by E.Fisher and The Creative Critic by K.Hilevaara etc). Though typical practice within fine art, this type of personal/academic critique is absent and needed within the Jewellery. Aligning thinking by jewellery scholars, theorists and historians such as Ungar and denBesten to more closely associate with the intentions of a jeweller’s practice.

Library research covered areas of Deconstruction, Art Theory, Speculative Realism and Anthropological Material Culture; supporting a new theory of Jewellery challenging existing paradigms. In particular, exploring the relationship between Derridean philosophies and their relationship to the text forms contained within my practice.

The book charts work which now resides in major public collections including the V&A, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Goldsmiths Company Collection and major public commissions including the Commonwealth Games Medal commission. The publication has been taken on by Gallery SO and Yellow-Chrome books. The publication had a launch at Gallery SO (September 2019) and then Crafts Scotland (November 2019), lectures on the publication given at Gallery SO, Glasgow School of Art and the RCA’s Urgency of the Arts Series. The texts and theories will inform an artist’s talk at Collect 2020.