Lisa Walker: Wearable

An extract from the main text by Liesbeth den Besten, Amsterdam

It started in Munich, the stylish Bavarian bourgeois city where she settled in 1995, and where her uncompromising and wild collection of graduation (Diplom) work exhibited in 2004 as "collection of finished pieces of jewellery, experiments, and pieces that may become jewellery" was like dropping a bombshell. She didn't adjust to any particular style or direction . She simply found her own assembling, bric-a-brac , spontaneous way of doing things with the intention to make jewellery. Bringing materials and objects together with the aim of wearing them on the body, to see them in interaction with the wearer, and challenging the wearer to put on forms that are not very "jewellery-like". She overcame her own inhibitions, she tried not to work with respect for the properties of the material. She even used materials she disliked, such as stereo-typed girlish and feminine pinkish and glittering things.

During these first German years her work had a quite disturbing character. It was an iconography of rubbish, hobby materials and disorder in soft , stuffed or sticky spray - painted and glued jewellery (metal and natural materials are not her favourite materials). But in this excess of wool, plastic, glue and rubbish you can also find bone, stone, shell and feathers " reminders and indicators of her New Zealand origin. There were also fabrics that originated from New Zealand and Australia, those far-away exotic countries that always get mixed up in the heads of Europeans. Walker sees no problem in mixing in one work two different fabrics, one showing Maori women dancing, the other a typical Aboriginal dots design. The stuffed necklace that came out of this fusion of cultures is her reflection on the New Zealand - Australian relationship, which is rather complicated and competitive if you live in one of these countries .

Walker's work should be read carefully then. Every little piece of material has its purpose and function in the design. Her work is loaded with references to the history of jewellery, fine art and New Zealand and German culture. For quite a while the sheep of her native country appear in her jewellery. She took sheep as her personal symbol of New Zealand, because this seemed to be the only thing Europeans knew about her country. Walker likes to work with the contrary, to make sense out of what is dismissed or disparaged. The title of an exhibition she held in Munich in 2008, on the occasion of her Unwearable book presentation, was Gold and Bones. The exhibition showed that her gold is nothing more than melted and glued gold leaf , while her bones are made of plastic. Referencing her position in between the fine metal tradition of Munich and the bone, stone and, shell tradition of New Zealand, she remains an iconoclast. Germany was a necessary station where she could create a response to the old New Zealand respect for nature and natural materials. 


Texts by Liesbeth den Beston, Damian Skinner, Raewyn Walsh, Tim Walker, Lisa Walker