Command P: Making Digital Material by Bin Dixon-Ward

Artist list

Bin Dixon-Ward

Bin works with digital manufacturing technology that allows her to make complex interconnected wearable forms that flow over the contours and movement of the body. The means of making (CAD and 3D printing), itself logic based, remains constant while her jewellery reveals the relationship between artist, wearer, material, and object as fluid and mutable. While examining the perception of the grid as an organising and framing device which shapes human activity, the constructed environments of the city are explored in both the process of making the artworks and in the objects themselves.

In isolating and downsizing forms found in the urban environment, it becomes a human scale and wearable. Through duplicating, layering and distorting these forms, the jewellery is abstracted from its origin. Through the techniques of CAD and 3D printing, the works identify relationships between the grid, digital fabrication, the city and the body of the wearer.


About the artist:
Dr Bin Dixon-Ward’s artistic interest is in the role of digital technology in contemporary jewellery practice. Her recent PhD examined the grid as a technology of the city and how interactions between humans and the grid, inject an organic quality to the rigid logic of the built environment. Her jewellery practice captures this interaction in wearable work that is both a product of technology and human engagement.

Her work is held in collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, The Museum of Arts and Sciences, Sydney, Musee des Artes Decoritifs Paris and the Art Gallery of South Australia. Bin has undertaken residencies at the Australian National University, Canberra and the East China Normal University (ECNU), Shanghai. Bin is a sessional lecturer at RMIT University, School of Art and is a regular guest lecturer at ECNU.