Melinda Young, Mapping the Tideline (detail) Brooches, 2020; Marine debris, driftwood, oxidised 925 silver
Melinda Young introduces the Trellis via her own journey of terrestrial and marine jewellery.
Engagement with the land as a jeweller is a varied proposition, as most jewellery has an inherent relationship with the land in some way, be it through the use of stones and metals and alloys from the earth. Or at the other end of the preciousness scale, via the seeking and gathering of debris, on the street, or along a shoreline to enact a transformation from trash to treasure. Garland’s garden trellis is adorned with many beautiful pieces of writing by and about jewellers whose practice engages with the land. These stories are deeply evocative and reveal the personal connections so many jewellers have with the land on which they make and the lands that inspire them.
In my own practice, engagement with the land comes from the perspective of a settler jeweller who occasionally uses metals, and rarely stones, mostly preferring to work with materials encountered directly whilst walking. In my engagement with the land, I consider its complex, troubled stories, as well as its ability to nourish and nurture. I am part of a community of jewellers who work in this way including Roseanne Bartley, Melissa Cameron, Cara Johnson, Pennie Jagiello, Catherine Large, Nellie Peoples & Zoë Veness, for whom the act of walking, noticing, gathering, documenting is an integral part of making, and also a way of coming to understand and know a place, a kind of wearable space/time mapping.
Throughout my life, I have walked to gather thoughts, images, materials and to make. Over the past few years, I have walked the same tract of coast (almost) daily, not only for a sense of routine and friendly encounters along the way, but also to learn. The land where I walk belongs to the Dharawal and Wodi Wodi people, whose Country it will always be. I feel the weight and significance of this place and a duty to assist with its care. Walking the same land allows an opportunity to observe and reflect on small and large changes to the land-scape. The shifting seasons bring about changes in light—storms, winds, tides, the sun and moon—all leave their mark and gradually I am learning the signs that indicate the Dharawal seasonal changes. Usually autumn swells bring driftwood. Sometimes in winter shoals of pebbles are exposed. Amongst them are weathered and tumbled bricks: relics from the old brickworks that used to be up the hill. Coal is always here. Slowly I am becoming familiar with what appears and when, and slowly over the years, enough materials are gathered to make work.
Melinda Young, The Intruders (brickface and coalface)
Recently huge weather events have seen the land and the ocean coalesce. The beach has become the landing place for debris swept downhill by torrential floods of rain, whilst concurrent massive tides have regurgitated vast quantities of seaweed and wood onto the shore. Amongst it all, there is the inescapable scourge of plastics.
As I walk, I gather, collecting plastics to clean the beach and gathering the occasional, irresistible piece of driftwood. The plastics are sorted, most are recycled, but some are washed and kept. The driftwood is dried. Both are used to make jewellery, sometimes together. Through this manner of engagement, I am constantly aware: looking, noticing, touching, smelling and listening. Gathered items become materials, either transformed in situ, or at the bench, combined with other elements into something with the potential for wearability. The materials speak back to the land. They are a document of time and place, revealing stories, and making connections with wearers and viewers.
Melinda Young, Future Relic Neckpiece, 2018; Plastic marine debris, brass, handspun fishing line (Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery Collection)
Since 2015 I have been the workshop facilitator for the Indigenous Jewellery Project, a role in which I have needed to be agile, adaptive, open, sensitive, and responsive to the land in unique locations. There is always a great deal of preliminary preparation. With each workshop, I have become better at asking questions to best understand the requirements, facilities, and potential complexities of each place. Nevertheless, I am always learning, before during and after every workshop about the land, culture, language, seasons, materials, gathering, preparing, making. Each workshop has required intensive and quickfire materials research that is specific to place, learning from the artists and also testing and playing with materials after hours to see how we might innovate a little together. This might be to better understand local materials, such as how seeds behave between picking, stringing, drying and wearing; how to gather and prepare shells. Or how to identify and use a box full of timber offcuts to create jewellery. I have come to know that, bound intrinsically to creating jewellery that engages with the land, deeper knowledges are also required. For example, developing an understanding of how materials behave over time, be they natural or unnatural, and that these understandings and ways of knowing are, in many instances, locally unique.
This knowledge feeds back into my own work and understanding of the land. For me, jewellery that engages with the land is a collaboration, a sort of co-making with its human and non-human occupants (and, ultimately a collaboration with the wearer). By making in this way, everything encountered, even the land itself is viewed through the lens of its jewelleryness.
Wearing jewellery that is from, or speaks of the land, helps to reveal its stories, through noticing and learning the lines and traces of the lands that hold us.
Melinda Young, Stitched Landscape Neckpiece – Bellambi Dunes, 2022; Silk and linen from old clothing, surgical gauze, thread, turbo argyrostomus shells, cord hand-spun with strands of frayed cloth used in the work.
For more about how The Land inspires jewellery practice, revisit these stories from Garland’s Jewellery trellis:
About Melinda Young
Melinda Young lives and works on Dharawal Country. Her research-based practice spans jewellery and intimately scaled textiles reflecting experiences of being in and understanding place, underpinned by complexities of place-based making in contemporary Australia. She is interested in materiality – the traces of human and non-human interactions left behind on the body and the land. Exhibiting extensively in Australia and internationally since 1997, her work is held in public collections and included in numerous publications. Melinda is an Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture UNSW and undertaking a PhD in Human Geography and Creative Arts, at the University of Wollongong. For more, see Melinda Young ✿ Writing and making by the sea
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Make jewelry
I love her imagination and how her jewelry looks