Room to view a room with a view
Melbourne-based jeweller Kirsten Haydon could never have imagined the profound impact the Antarctic would have on her work when she was an Antarctic Arts Fellow to the frozen landscape in 2004.
Eighteen months after the experience, Haydon says she is still transfixed by the environment — the massive ice landscape having changed the way she thinks. “It is really profound the way it has influenced the way I now see colour and the way I approach my work,” she says.
“Because everything is so white, everything else stands out. You really notice the human impact and how it translates to the rest of the environment.”
The first show of her Antarctic work is on now at Christchurch Art Gallery. room with a view is a new experience of jewellery that Haydon has created by adapting ideas of exploration and referencing her own relationship with Antarctic.
Haydon, originally from Auckland, was the first jeweller to visit the Antarctic and she says it was an “incredible experience”.
For Haydon, jewellery is a personal and sentimental medium. “Historically, many objects were fashioned in the form of miniature representations of landscapes and icons and have been used to remind people of journeys and experiences.
“There has never been much jewellery made specifically relating to the Antarctic because it has not been a place that many people have experienced.”
Haydon says she is now creating these objects through her exhibition pieces — necklaces, brooches and buttons. She wants the visitors to become “the explorers” and get to experience their own Antarctic.
- room with a view by Kirsten Haydon is at the Christchurch Art Gallery from 11 August to 3 December.
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