Contemporary Ornamentation

Jewellery artists Elise Hatlø, Heidi Sand and Anna Talbot feel ornamentation is underestimated. To them ornamentation is a vehicle for telling stories and expressing ideas.

 

 
Ornamentation is a specific field, yet it cuts across all the arts. It is the art we add to art, by means of shapes and patterns positioned on an object or building for the pleasure of the eye. Often ornaments are so familiar that we do not see them; they are almost like visual background music. Other times they suddenly claim our full attention. Ornaments have not always been favoured in the arts, but they have always been there and now are undoubtedly back.

Norwegiancrafts interviewed three artists, Elise Hatlø, Heidi Sand and Anna Talbot, and asked them about their own work with ornaments and the use of ornamentation in contemporary crafts.

Grandma’s tatting
Elise Hatlø (b.1981) studied metal art and jewellery at Oslo National Academy of the Arts and graduated with a Master’s Degree in 2009. Before this she studied market communication at Westerdal’s School of Communication and Graphic Design at the Mercantile Institute in Oslo. Hatlø has held several exhibitions in Norway and abroad and, for the second year in a row, is presenting her work atCOLLECT, an international art fair for contemporary objects held at the Saatchi Gallery in London.

 

 
Launched in 2004 as one of the Crafts Council’s flagship events,COLLECT is a prestigious exhibition venue that brings together selected galleries from around the globe. From Norway, Galleri Format and Galleri Kunst1 will represent 20 craft artists working in a range of media and materials.

Hatlø will be represented by Galleri Format. She is one of several jewellery artists in Norway who explores ornaments as means of expression in contemporary jewellery. She considers them as symbols of bygone eras. In her latest series of jewellery calledGrandma Goes to Tokyo, we can clearly see how opposites interact – how older, nostalgic expressions infiltrate and inform contemporary expressions.

For Hatlø, applying ornaments and complex details is a way to make her jewellery more interesting and to distance her expression from the methods and ideas of minimalistic art:

 

 
‘My work aims to give pleasure; it is something to rest your eyes on, detail on detail on detail. I hope people can discover something new in the work every day. Simple and pure expressions are not what I work with
these days’, Hatlø says.

In Grandma Goes to Tokyo, Hatlø explores what happens to the expressive quality of a grandmotherly type of needlework when it is combined with the dramatic colours that are so typical for a part of Japanese teenage culture known as Harajuku fashion. Her inspiration comes from ornaments and the aesthetics of old textile crafts. She is primarily interested in tatting patterns and how they change and become surreal and humoristic when combined with strong fluorescent colours. This exploration creates the form and basis for a series of necklaces and brooches.

 

 
Hatlø says she reckons her work is more accessible than most contemporary art: ’Those who do not find interest in art can still see the value in the craftsmanship. Furthermore, the ornament is easily recognizable and our thoughts can travel back in history.’

Nature’s ornaments
In another jewellery series, Ghost Town from 2010, Hatlø takes a different approach to older forms of ornamentation. She tells a story about an abandoned town in Bangladesh where nature has begun to take over man-made objects.

‘In my work there is always a message, a story that needs to be told. I do not want to tell this story through a lot of words, but through shapes, colour and the title,’ says Hatlø.

 

 
The jewellery expresses the beauty we can find in something overgrown. When a place becomes neglected, nature starts to bring the place back to its origin, and in the process a beautiful patina on wood and iron is created. In Ghost Town, Hatlø recreate, via jewellery, these particular colours and surfaces that take many years to develop in nature.

‘I work with ornaments as symbols of bygone times. To me they represent an era when people appreciated good craftsmanship and spent a long time making something as simple as a gate. Ornaments are therefore icons of happiness, and tell of something good and safe. Just like in nature’s own ornaments and grandma’s crochet and tatting.’

The pieces are made with electroformed and patinated silver and copper, with precious stones crocheted in with silk thread.

Hatlø has worked with ornamentation for several years now, and approaches it both as a message and an expression:

 

 
‘I have not intentionally tried to provoke people, but several times have been asked why I choose to work with beauty. By beauty, I think they actually refer to the ornaments. My answer is simply that ornaments are where the stories are to be found.’

She also points out that when it comes to ornaments, the history differs between fine art and crafts. The use of ornamentation is perhaps more usual in jewellery, but even in this field, there have been times when its use has been suppressed. ‘There are lots of ornaments in jewellery. But lately we have seen much research in materials, and many jewellers have made works that are on the verge of impracticality.’

 

 
But ornaments are also used in fine art, particularly within political art, Hatlø points out. ‘Ornaments beautifully visualize a culture or religion, yet without using words. Also worth noting is that styles and movements always return. Pure and simple minimalism will always, after a while, cause us to hunger for a more maximalistic expression. At the same time I think there is a difference between fine art and the crafts. Craftsmen have not been afraid of using ornaments, whereas artists working with other genres and art forms have sometimes felt it was taboo.’

Rhythm and contrast
Another artist who explores ornaments is Heidi Sand. Her artistic and visual expressions are largely conveyed through the use of ornaments and the construction of patterns. She creates a sense of lightness and delicacy through perforating metal. This is a time-consuming procedure that allows compositions to emerge between the positive and negative forms. Sand (b. 1957) studied in Oslo, at the National College of Art and Design, Institute for Metal. Later she attended State University of New York’s institute for jewellery and Haystack Mountain School for Crafts in Main, USA. She earned her Goldsmith Certificate in 1994.

 

 
Sand’s works are exhibited both in Norway and abroad and she is represented in several permanent collections. Among the major purchasers are Arts Council Norway, Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affaires, the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Oslo, the West Norway Museum of Decorative Art in Bergen, and the National Museum of Decorative Art in Trondheim. In addition, Sand has coordinated several international exhibitions of Norwegian jewellery, and was formerly the director of RAM galleri. She is now head of the Metal and Jewellery Department at Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

The moods of ornaments
From 10 March to 17 April, Sand’s works were featured at RAM Galleri in Oslo, in an exhibition called Internal Landscapes. This solo exhibition consisted of fully wearable jewellery in various sizes and formats. The title of the exhibition and the titles of the objects – examples are X-ray and Pulse – invited viewers to contemplate what is internal versus external to the human body.

 

 
Sand sees ornamentation as a universal language:
‘When building an ornament, the designer is free to choose one or more elements and repeat them at will, so there are no limitations on an ornament’s appearance. In some of my works I have referred to “rose painting” (rosemaling) or gathered inspiration from nature and geometry. In later works the ornament structure is inspired by the human body’s inner landscape, its microcosms and organs.’

Sand uses ornamentation to achieve a certain expression, and combines ornaments with form and structure.

‘Designing ornaments involves evaluating how forms cohere, and the relationships between shapes, lines and negative spaces.’

Sand remarks that ornaments have a range of qualities rendering various temperatures and moods. She gives an example:
‘An ornament with regularly repeated shapes brings peace to the eye; a more aggressive, irregular design will create unease. It would therefore be totally wrong to claim that an ornament’s only purpose is to create joy and pleasure.’

Ornaments reflect the epoch in which they are made, and Sand’s work entitled Displacement shows exactly this, for it is undeniably contemporary. Sand says:
‘Ornaments have always been part of the art of the period in which they are made, wherever patterns and repetitions occur.’

 

 
But Sand has observed that the concept of what an ornament is has been wrongly described in the art discourse as an element of beautification, and that an ornament can only be a decoration for an existing form or function.

‘It is an odd, almost conspiratorial theory, not to recognize ornamentation as a method for developing artistic expressions.’

Displacement, like other pieces in the exhibition Internal Landscapes, is made of brass and Formica ColorCore. The piece challenges us with the aesthetics and internal functions of the human body. Its title also underscores the challenging aspect, and opens a door to new and unexpected perspectives – the wearer carries on the outside what is happening on the inside. The almost Pop Art shape gives the jewellery an obvious contemporary look.

Fairytales and a narrative expression
When discussing ornamentation, one cannot forget Anna Talbot (b. 1978). She has an extensive education, having studied art and design at Leeds College of Art and Design in the UK.

 

 

After this she pursued humanities courses including comparative literature, art history, folk culture and mass culture at the University of Bergen in Norway. Talbot earned her BA in silversmithing, jewellery and applied crafts from London Metropolitan University in the UK. In 2009 she finished her Master’s Degree at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Department of Metal.

Talbot has held several exhibitions in Norway and abroad. Like Elise Hatlø, she is presenting her works at COLLECT in London for the second year running. Talbot is inspired by fairytales, nursery rhymes, songs and stories, and she aims to tell stories through characters, colours and materials. Talbot uses ornaments as tools for achieving a certain look, but also as expressions in their own right.

‘In some cases I am happy to play with ornaments as pure beauty and as visual expressions. I feel privileged to be able to work within a field that can use methods from a range of art forms.’

 

 
Talbot uses ornaments to tell stories:
‘When working with fairytales and a narrative expression, I focus on how the ornaments contribute to the story by communicating a mood or a message,’ she explains.

Even animals, birds, woods and trees find their way into her works, not to mention words and whole sentences.

She uses strong colours and different surfaces to illustrate and create atmosphere:

 

 
‘The most ornamental aspects of my work have been interpreted by others as typically Norwegian, but the people who say this have a rather unclear view of what “Norwegian” is. My inspiration comes from fairytales, stories, song lyrics and the like, both Norwegian and international. Compared with other artists, I think I use a rather international visual language.’

Ornamentation, Talbot says, is rarely a matter of pure national expression; we inspire and influence each other.

‘Ornaments travel widely. And especially within my field of work, we are interested in what is going on elsewhere in the world.’

 

 
Meanwhile, despite ornamentation being integral to all cultures, Talbot finds it frustrating to need to legitimate her work and working methods, especially with terminology developed for the field of fine art.

‘We need our own terminology and theory for the contemporary crafts field. We must be brave enough to stand on our own feet and not twist and bend to fit our work to suit theories minted for the fine arts. If we persist in using this nomenclature, we will always be seen as the subordinate little sister, or merely as decoration.’