Melissa Cameron, pins and earrings (left to right)5843 pin a, found steel, stainless steel, vitreous enamel 155 x 12 x 12 mm 5849 pin a found steel, stainless steel, vitreous enamel 75 x 30 x 12 mm 6095 earrings found steel, stainless steel, vitreous enamel 23 x 6 x 15 mm 5849 pin b found steel, stainless steel, vitreous enamel 50 x 70 x 12 mm 6008 + 6010 earrings found steel, stainless steel, vitreous enamel 35 x 5 x 10 mm
The use of found materials can focus our minds on the world at our feet. Melissa Cameron’s new work, Marfa TX, turns this moment into singular jewellery.
My past is a foreign country. We do things differently t/here.
In 2017 I went on vacation to Marfa, TX, with Bruce and Elaine. It’s in the Chihuahuan desert; there, dropped steel has a long life on the ground. Seeing steel, and knowing I could geotag what I picked up using my phone’s camera, I started a solo scavenger hunt. It covered a campsite; a former US military base (now a part of the Chinati Foundation); the grounds of hotels, diners, galleries and museums; and the dusty streets and sidewalks of the town.
Marfa is in the Chihuahuan desert; there, dropped steel has a long life on the ground. Seeing steel, and knowing I could geotag what I picked up using my phone’s camera,I started a solo scavenger hunt. It covered a campsite; a former US military base(now a part of the Chinati Foundation); the grounds of hotels, diners, galleries and museums; and the dusty streets and sidewalks of the town.
My time/space capsule of finds moved continent with me in 2018-2019. It was finally reopened in Perth. I printed the photos, matched and mapped the finds, researched, and drew. I used this data, and the found objects, to make jewellery.
Since childhood, I have picked up bits of metal from the ground. In Marfa, recording and collecting felt instinctive, inevitable. In Perth, I struggled to understand my compulsion at that time and in that place. I had to be with the collection and contextualize it, almost archeologically, in order to reimagine it.
Some finds have been altered significantly. Others minimally. All have travelled far. As have I.
Melissa Cameron, August 2019
30,18.2078N, 104,1.3138W. The steel found for “pin a”.
Melissa Cameron – Marfa TX11 is at Bilk Galleries, 11 September – 13 October 2019
