The jewellery of Lucy Noone

 Inspired by the nostalgia of her childhood kitchen, jeweller Lucy Noone’s work evokes questions on patriarchal and art historical hierarchies.  Lucy Noone is a Dunedin based jeweller, who recently graduated with a Bachelor of Visual arts (BVA) in jewellery from the Otago Polytechnic School of art. The collection was created as a part of Noone’s graduate show at SITE last year.  Upon leaving home the usual gift most New Zealand mothers bequeath to their children is a copy of the iconic Edmonds cookbook. This ‘rite of passage’ of a gift is engrained with the imagery we associate fondly of our mothers preparing food that we would later make ourselves. Noone was given a very old copy of the Edmonds cookbook from her mother. The works immediately register a feeling of warmth. This is through both the connection Noone has with her Mother and the sense of childhood nostalgia to which we can all relate. Most of us have fond memories of our Mothers cooking a feast in the kitchen.  The series of necklaces and broaches features both recipes printed on Mylar and the physical outcome of using one of the recipes (toffee). The multisensory works consist of coffee dyed ropes, which hold found glass bottles, with toffee inside. Each work smells so good, that it’s difficult to restrain yourself from trying to eat them. The process of creating these works was extremely labour intensive and a serendipitous course of trial and error.

The use of toffee was an exhaustive exercise of trying to predict how it would change over time. This was due primarily to the sugar inside of the toffee reacting to atmospheric conditions. The toffee inside these bottles is constantly changing and moulding into something new. The toffee is in fact burnt and is of much deeper, richer colour than that of what we could actually eat. The necklaces made of Mylar and shaped like tiny little houses were hand sewn. Each work is so delicately refined and seemingltoddly so precious.Through the reference to both craft and the kitchen, Noone’s work is innately feminine. The collection examines the whole notion of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art hierarchies; through it’s incorporation of craft technique and the female’s role as a housewife. The collection is based upon the idea of a repressed traditional house wife, who expresses herself through the food she prepares in the kitchen.  On a deeper level the works are a fundamental rejection of the idea that the ‘man brings home the bacon’ and the ‘women cook’. These works are a rejection of the gender roles in which we are socialised to uphold. Noone’s collection can be aligned to the idea of the ‘maternal’ body, through her use of materials and the use of text in reference to the semiotic. The series of symbols which appear throughout each work signifies the intended disruption of art historical hegemonies. At the very core of Lucy Noone’s jewellery is a celebration of the maternal, of cooking and of memory. It is both an examination of the gender roles and the connotations we associate with cooking.  P

hotos: Lucy Fulford (lucyfulford.co.nz)
Styling: Hana Aoake Model:
Kayleigh from Ali McD