Joy BC
Colonna, 2023
18kt yellow Pinton gold, recycled 925 silver bracelet
Edition of 5 + 1 AP
Unique within the series
“Columns and pillars are symbols of strength. Yet this column has been broken into pieces. The pieces have then been re-assembled and held together with gold. This wearable sculpture, which can be adorned as a bracelet, literally it bends. A seemingly rigid form now made flexible. To mend a broken bone that has been shattered in several places, pins are put in place to hold it together, to allow it to heal. This work looks at how so many of the western ideals of democracy have been shattered, bent and broken. It is time to rebuild, mend and heal. Akin to the art of Kintsugi, a Japanese technique of mending fragmented ceramics with gold and urushi lacquer (which I learnt about whilst on a research fellowship in Japan), the fragments of this broken column are held together with gold.
This column in particular is Ionic. Ionic columns were sturdy, detailed and ornate, serving both as a work of art and a supportive structure. The Greek architect Vitruvius suggests that Ionic design was brought about by elements of the female body– which I think in itself are interesting. If we take the description of ionic columns being both ‘being a work of art, and a supportive structure’; does that sound familiar to the ideals which western society superimpose on women? Much of my work explores the ‘feminine’ and perceptions of beauty within western art.
The work also explores my Italian heritage. The gold that joins it is a recipe that I learnt, called ‘Lega Pinton’ which originates from the Padova school of goldsmith’s, and was taught to me by master goldsmith Giovanni Corvaja. Spending this past year in Italy, travelling from Rome to Umbria, I visited the Foro Romano, which is full of broken columns. There is something alluring and beautiful in their damage _ Still standing are the ruins, but what do they stand for?
Consider what the ruin stands for. The demise and destruction of past empires’ and the rise of new ones. The universal reality of collapse. A warning from the past – an ideal of beauty that is alluring exactly because of its flaws and imperfections and failures. That natures claims all. The outside comes in. A space where confines and what seemed so stable, cracks, collapses and changes. Ruins allow us to set ourselves loose in time, to hover among past, present and future. I don’t see time as linier but rather interconnected. Cycles of decay and regrowth. It is often in the breaks, painful seismic raptures that we change and grow the most”. Joy BC
All images © Olivia Rose