Ailsa Morrant: Glasgow School of Art. Selected Graduate 2018

Glasgow School of Art, United Kingdom.


Jewellery in a world of despair: objects of mindful wellbeing? Bachelor Honours Thesis 2018.

Through the lens of jewellery, I investigated happiness, its commodification and how, ironically, the pressure of achieving it, is contributing to a global epidemic of mental illness rather than eradicating it.
Jewellery evolved from a primordial act of self-expressive, mindful adornment that elicited wellbeing. However, today’s confused and depressed capitalist society is, paradoxically, buying more jewellery without realising this effect. 
I, therefore, hypothesized that the promotion and realisation of jewellery’s potent primordial effect, focused on everyday materiality and self-expression, rather than materialism and status, could contribute to societal mental health improvement. 
To test this, I initially focused on making visible our primordial, existential senses by studying handshakes; a social ritual which subconsciously, psychologically connects us for a moment, enabling the sensing of each other, without us even being aware what is happening until afterwards.  
I made casts of the palm to palm space that exists between people when they shook hands. These unique casts look like disembodied internal organs. The first outcome of my thesis was, therefore, a series of these forms entitled Organs of Society. To consider the relationship of social connectivity, value and materiality I cast the forms in materials ranging from chocolate through to precious metals. 
Then, from structured interviews with jewellers and non-jewellers, along with studies of how wearing jewellery made from the handshake forms affected the wearers, I identified that the jewellery which is most effective in building emotional resilience and mindfulness is that which materialises from moments of connection. To explore this further I created my second outcome, a portrait series of 16 medals to my everyday moments entitled Sensing every moment: a celebration of the ordinary. 
One of my medals, A moment when I lost it, was a back to back pair of double brooch pins. This piece engaged both the wearer and others, conceptually and physically. It prompted me to further investigate the relationship between mindfulness and the ‘tense’ of a piece. From my observations, to reinforce mindfulness, a piece must speak of ‘carpe diem’ or ‘memento vivere’ rather than a past moment.
Celebrate the moment, is my final series in this body of work, continuing my exploration of engagement, materiality, mindfulness and tense through brooches incorporating the transient, playful materiality of a balloon that can be inflated and worn in seconds, celebrating a moment, and pod brooch kits that can be used as a changeable displays to keep safe everyday fragments associated with a moment’s experience.  

From my study I have concluded that there is a prevalent, conflicting, subversive, societal relationship between mental health, materiality, materialism and self-expression and that this is narrated through society’s perception and use of jewellery, which has a duplicitous role in our material culture.
Elements of this conclusion echo what initiated the Postmodernist New Jewellery Movement, but I hope my gently activist work identifies another solution through an emerging Mindful Activist Jewellery Movement, working collaboratively to enable others to adopt a mindful approach to creating and using jewellery to improve mental health and resilience.

/ Ailsa Morrant


More work and contacts:
Website: www.ailsamorrant.com
Instagram: ailsamorrant
Email: ailsamorrant.artdesignmake@gmail.com

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