Simon Cottrell
Jeweller
/
MunichJewelleryWeek2016
Published: 11.04.2016
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Simon Cottrell, born in Australia. Artist who lives, and work in Camberra, Australia. Simon is the Head of the Gold and Silversmithing Workshop at the Australian National University, in Canberra. Studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University (RMITU) & at the RMIT University Melbourne, Australia. Awarded in 2012 with the Ronnie Bauer Research Alumni Prize, RMIT Gold & Silversmithing, Australia, with works in several collections.Statement
When our senses are presented with something that is familiar and yet also ambiguous, our curiosity is triggered and sensory engagement is extended. This is because our ability to be definitive about what we are actually looking at becomes hard to bring to a clear resolve. At what point does your curiosity switch off allowing your assumptions to be viewed as fact. What can we assume to be truth in our perceptions? Can a deeper curiosity in any subject undermine our faith in our own opinions?If there is a potential line between these objects being perceived as either one way or another, I will try to sit on that line. Where that line lies however depends very much on the attentiveness of the viewer. Hence the ambiguity here is multi-layered and shifting.
Are these pieces serious or playful? ...complex or simple? ...monotone or dynamic? ...plants or anatomy? ...Rocks or clouds?... Flowers or exploding ammunition. I am building structures, details and relationships between them that have the potential to be all of the above and many more things beyond.
All of what I have stated above is relating to the decisive cognitive aims to which I attempt to direct your sensory experience. In essence the work doesn’t aim to tell a viewer anything; more simply I want to give the wearer and the viewer a personal sensory experience, in a lasting, resonant but quiet manner. No matter how close we look ...or the angle we view them ...on what clothes or in what way we wear them, all these pieces are not conceived to be made clear sense of. Rather the aim is to offer a gentle shifting diversity of perceptual readings depending on the context. The more you look the more you see. The more that you see, the relationships between your perceptions of certain details begin to progress and change. Through this your cognitive building of linkages between sensual stimulus and applied meaning also begin to shift and change. There can be no punch line in this work although it is inevitable that your mind will attempt to find one... as it is human nature to try and make clear sense of our experiences.
The work itself is stimulated and Informed by insights into the broad phenomenology of creative process. In particular the relationships between sensation and perception. Toying with the parallels between the act of making and engaging with creative output. Being consciously aware of these processes simply enables me to get out of their way. These brooches are not ‘designed’ in a formal sense, instead they’re intuitive pieces, and each one starts from the memory of all previous works. I just sit down and down start making, while watching closely over my own shoulder.
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