Precious materials

 Personally, I was drawn to the piece of jewellery in the picture below as it not only pushed the ‘what is jewellery?’ notion, but did however also challenge the perceptions of people. This item of jewellery made seemed to capture in essence what I would like to strive towards when trying to create a dialogue or narrative, it would stick and make people look.

Figure 31 Byrne EC. (2014:12). Precious Material (Performance Art Still), 2009

She has once again been purposeful when selecting her narrative materials to create her jewellery; she has used sterling silver, pearls, gemstones and even hamburgers. In this piece of jewellery which she has named “Precious

Material”, she has tried to force the viewer to reflect on their personal outlook when it comes to what they regard as precious.  She has thus decided to use a burger in order to spark a conversation on what is precious, since the cow (the burger meat) is considered to ‘precious’ in India it would provide a contrast to how it would be viewed in America, which is one of the number one fast food countries. Taking into account that these countries are oceans apart, with contrasting values, way of life and traditions, the material choice is relevant in wanting to question ‘why ‘do we regard what we believe is precious as precious.