Abstract
Multiple facets connect the politics of space to the politics of bodies. The scale of objects surrounds our bodies. We wear and display them. They are all crafted and designed, yet we fail to acknowledge our engagement and their political significance. The political dimension is evident in the design process. Regardless of an object’s scale—even architecture can be viewed as a form of object—its design is typically tailored to a single standardised body. Scale is a constraint for both jewellery and architecture. Both are designed and bound by spatial context, and the body is the inherent factor, considering how the body moves within space. Small and monumental spaces use the human form as a reference point. It adapts in relation to the emotional realm by looking at the utilitarian and societal functions of objects and imagining and reproducing pieces that are made visually. By analysing my creative practice that explores the spatial practices that emerged across the span from craft to building, developing what will be thought of as a body politic, one that uniquely welds landscape concerns with corporeal-expressive repertoires that complexly test and afford modes of belonging and identity. My creative practice research investigates the complex intersection of craft practices and architecture in the context of a consolidating émigré community that made its home in Titirangi, Aotearoa/New Zealand, in the 1950s. My pieces, as body adornment, are to reflect how women occupied space in these modernist houses and understand why adornment is of such value.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Creative practice, Politics of space, Bodies, Adornment, Architecture, Artefacts
