Kevin Murray: Re-wilding Jewelry – Artwork Jewellery Discussion board

The Australian editor of Garland journal poses the query: What does it imply to make jewellery for the “greater than human”?

Murray gave this presentation as a part of the 2026 “AJF Speaker Collection: Jewellery that Makes You Assume,” which featured 16 talks over 5 days. Many of the collection happened within the sales space AJF shared with Arnoldsche Artwork Publishers on the commerce honest.

Re-wilding Jewelry
The rising area of land jewelry in Australia

Coledale Necklace
The COVID lockdown was a once-in-a-lifetime alternative to check out new artistic practices. I used to be notably struck by a collection of interventions by the Australian jeweller Melinda Younger. Whereas remoted from others, she walked alongside her native seaside, gathering supplies and making use of her jewelry sensibility to what she discovered. The Coledale necklace (2023), for example, is a big work shaped from a collection of pale shells collected from that shoreline. Outdoors of the conventional expectations of store or gallery, hers was a reaffirmation of the primordial act of decoration.

The “greater than human”
It prompts the query. There was a lot current curiosity in practices that have interaction with what is named the “more-than-human.” Whereas there are sensible methods through which people can assist different species flourish, comparable to ceramic soral, the query of decoration stays problematic. What profit does nature acquire from our makes an attempt to beautify it?
In Younger’s case, her work resembles the making of cairns—the stacking of rocks as a sign of your presence to future travellers. It’s a easy rearrangement of parts already at hand in nature. For Younger, this can be a social sign made in isolation: it turns into a manner of sharing an appreciation of panorama with others.
Ultimately, when works discovered their manner into the gallery, they featured human-made remnants comparable to brick and coal. These are eroded by the ocean over a long time, turning into easy to the contact. You possibly can learn into them a collaboration between Younger and the “greater than human”.

On Nation
This try and work with nature has explicit relevance to Australian jewellers of settler origin. Because the myths of empire have waned, Australian life has not too long ago been strongly influenced by First Nations tradition, particularly its deep dedication to “Nation”. In Australia, “Nation” refers not merely to land, however to a dwelling system of kinship, ancestry and duty. That is evident within the work of First Nations jeweller Maree Clark, who revived the kangaroo-tooth necklace made out of roadkill. Such practices spotlight how adornment can sign relationship and duty to put.

Shimenawa
This rising observe prompts the query: What does it imply to adorn nature? Right here, the Japanese custom of shimenawa is instructive. It’s possible you’ll recall the scene within the Studio Ghibli animation My Neighbour Totoro (1988) through which the Kusakabe household bows earlier than an important camphor tree encircled by a sacred rope. The rope necklace marks the tree as spiritually important and separate from human pursuits, comparable to logging. It clearly has no apparent operate for the tree itself, not like interventions comparable to espalier or topiary. Its operate is extra adverse: it prompts gratitude somewhat than alternatives.

Land artwork
This type of adornment is sort of distinct from the interventions of land artwork, most dramatically exemplified by Christo, whose wrapping of landscapes—together with Little Bay in Sydney (Wrapped Coast — One Million Sq. Toes, 1969) —could be learn as a grand imposition on nature, an anthropocentric assertion of dominance. In contrast, what we would name “land jewelry,” typically practised by girls, tends to work with what’s already current somewhat than overpowering it.

Yu-Fang Chi
An excessive and poetic instance is Yufang Chi, who, throughout a residency in Belgium, braided grass in situ as an act of jewellery-making inside the panorama itself. As she wrote concerning the work:
…winding grasses is just like the leaping rings of a necklace—one after the other, linked as a loop. Folks strolling across the piece made it like a shifting jewel.

Expanded jewelry
Yu-Fang’s work resonates with the concept of expanded jewelry explored by Roseanne Bartley, whose Human Necklace (2004) undertaking engaged the circle dance in Barcelona as a dwelling chain of decoration. Right here, jewelry expands from object to relation.

Tree Ring
Bushes, specifically, have impressed important works. A seminal instance is The Tree Ring (2005) by Marion Hosking, who solid an imprint of a giant ash gum within the Gippsland forest and later exhibited the 20-metre-long silver kind in a gallery. Not like the shimenawa, this doesn’t bodily reconnect us with the tree, however the high-quality element of bark impressed into steel carries a robust testimony to its presence, bringing the hint of the forest into an city setting.

Cara Johnson
As but, the observe of land jewelry has been largely symbolic. There may be little sense of a mutual profit between human and nature within the observe. The current work of Cara Johnson strikes on this route. Johnson combines her jewelry observe with operating a plant nursery in rural Victoria. Johnson often employs supplies related to settler management of panorama, notably plastic tree guards, which she transforms into necklaces. She has mirrored on ring-barking as a type of violence, and has created works that act as a adverse model of the shimenawa—necklaces that acknowledge injury somewhat than sanctity.

Remnant
Her public commissions are notably instructive. The Remnant (2023) fee at Lake Eildon responded to bushland that had been flooded. Johnson wrapped the department of a drowned tree in rope, which she then solid in iron. After returning the department to the lake, the place it resumes its decay, she planted grassland species across the solid rope kind. Johnson returns frequently to watch the expansion and witness the patina. Whereas a symbolic act of homage, Johnson combines this with adornment as regeneration.

Greybox
Greybox (2025) was a neighborhood authorities fee that responded to the timber felled for a prepare yard enlargement. Taking one in all these useless timber, she ringed it with 20 gray field saplings grown from native seed. In these works, she honours nature utilizing the very supplies supplied by the location.

What’s the place of “land jewelry” within the broader area?
Whereas this trajectory is especially related to the Australian scene, it additionally contributes to the broader jewelry area. Within the broader context of jewelry observe, it’s useful to recall the spatial framework developed within the AJF publication Up to date Jewellery in Perspective (2013). This framework traced jewelry’s shifting values throughout contexts: on the bench, within the gallery, on the plinth, within the journal; within the drawer as assortment; on the physique in pleasure; on the road in identification; within the temple as sacred; and, on this case, within the panorama. When jewelry strikes into the land, its central concern turns into the cultivation of proper relations between people and nature. Not like within the different areas, we ask of this work the way it advantages the more-than-human.

Does nature care about adornment?
Right here we return to our preliminary query: Does nature care if we adorn it? Maybe the query isn’t whether or not nature wants our adornment, however what adornment reveals about us. When a rope encircles a tree, when a useless trunk is solid in silver, when seedlings are planted round a felled kind, these gestures don’t enhance nature in any materials sense. As an alternative, they alter our relation to it. To adorn could be to say, nevertheless it will also be to restrain. It may mark one thing as sacred—not in a mystical sense, however within the easy and radical sense that it’s past use. Land jewelry, at its most considerate, doesn’t beautify the world. It acknowledges it. And in that acknowledgement lies the opportunity of a extra cautious presence.

Postscript
If you want to discover these tales additional, many have been collected with Melinda Younger in a Garland function titled Trellis: The Backyard of Tales. The title evokes a construction that helps development—a framework inside which nature can flourish. It’s an apt metaphor for land jewelry itself: not an imposition, however a scaffold for a relationship.

References and additional studying
Black, C. F. The Land Is the Supply of the Legislation: A Dialogic Encounter with Indigenous Jurisprudence. Routledge, 2010.
Chi, Yu-Fang. “When the Land Turns into a Jewel.” Garland Journal, n.d. Accessed March 1, 2026. https://garlandmag.com/article/when-the-land-becomes-a-jewel/.
Up to date Jewellery in Perspective. Edited by Damian Skinner. Lark Crafts, 2013.
Johnson, Cara. “Tracing Bushes: Processing Land Clearing by way of a Jewelry Observe.” Garland Journal, March 5, 2021. https://garlandmag.com/article/tracing-trees/.
Information Home for Craft. “Past the Gallery.” Accessed March 1, 2026. https://knowledgehouseforcraft.org/Warp/Talks/Past+the+Gallery.
Lippard, Lucy R. The Lure of the Native: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society. New Press, 1997.
Loop. “Mel Younger ✿ Mapping the Tideline.” Garland Journal, June 1, 2020. https://garlandmag.com/mapping-the-tideline/.
Murray, Kevin. “The Sacred Ring: Craft for the ‘Greater than Human.’” Garland Journal, February 20, 2026. https://garlandmag.com/the-sacred-ring/.
Skinner, Damian, and Kevin Murray. A Historical past of Up to date Jewelry in Australia and New Zealand: Place and Adornment. College of Hawaii Press, 2014.
“Trellis ✿ Jewelry on Land.” Garland Journal, Might 28, 2024. https://garlandmag.com/trellis/.

Questions
● Is that this actually jewelry, or is it environmental artwork?
● Does nature want our symbolic gestures?
● Is that this totally different from ritual?
● Why body Christo as domination? Wasn’t his work celebratory?
● What about consent? Can a tree be adorned ethically?
● Is that this particularly Australian, or common?
● Is that this aestheticising environmental loss?

Dr Kevin Murray
Dr Kevin Murray is the editor of Garland Journal and the co-founder of the Information Home for Craft. He has curated many jewelry exhibitions, comparable to Welcome Indicators, Guild Limitless, Indicators of Change and Joyaviva: Stay Jewelry throughout the Pacific and written associated publications, together with Place and Adornment: A Historical past of Up to date Jewelry in Australia and New Zealand (with Damian Skinner). In affiliation with Artwork Jewellery Discussion board, he arrange an envoy program to mirror the range of jewelry voices throughout the broader world. He lives on the backside of the world in Melbourne, recognized once more as Narrm, the place he’s a Senior Trade Fellow at RMIT College College of Artwork. On the facet, he’s the coordinating editor of the Encyclopedia of African Crafts. See jewellery-related writing right here.

The opinions acknowledged right here don’t essentially specific these of AJF.

We welcome your feedback on our publishing, and we are going to publish letters that have interaction with our articles in a considerate and well mannered method. Please submit letters to the editor electronically; accomplish that right here. The web page on which we publish Letters to the Editor is right here.

© 2026 Artwork Jewellery Discussion board. All rights reserved. Content material is probably not reproduced in complete or partially with out permission. For reprint permission, contact data (at) artjewelryforum (dot) org