Project
Jewellery Materials and Design
Project
Satur Chong
How to Possess Contemporary Jewellery
Jewellery Materials and Design
Welcome to Step on my Jewellery
Left: Event where the jewellery was in use at the entrance in HPO building. Through repeatedly stepping, the gold foil sentence will gradually wear off and replaced by the dirtiness, where the goldish and the greyish convey similar literal instruction to the audience.
Wear Tall Hat
Right: The tall hat sign placed in various public spaces. Left: the utility of the artefact transformed from a public sign into a personal hat through wearing.
Contemporary Heirloom
Left: the compass device draws a gold circle ‘adornment’ on clothes/skin with the gold crayon. Right: the compass scratches and marks a red circle dent on skin with the sharp diamond tip which lasts for hours.
Renaissanse of Bartering
To comply to the ring’s destiny infused by the jeweller’s will of plotting the renaissance of bartering ritual in the modern society, its current owner is required to barter this ring with the next inheritor he choses, and so on.
Does ‘performative craft’ create narrative?
No longer efficient in creating aesthetic shown on the object’s final appearance, here the purpose of craft is redefined as the narrative elaborated by the crafting process itself, thus challenging the audience’s perception towards the existence of the artefacts’ inherent meanings and values.
Satur Chong
How to Possess Contemporary Jewellery

Chong’s interest in jewellery was initiated from a doubtable instinct of its coincidental connection with the term Postmodernism. Utilizing the notion of possession in jewellery, this series experiments with the relationship between artist, participant, and audience.

‘Wear Tall Hat’, in Chinese, denotes a meaning of flattering somebody. The instruction could be interpreted as the jeweller’s willingness to ‘flatter the audience a tall hat’, or the audience wanting to flatter the jeweller by complying with her instruction, but such actions can make embarrass the wearer in public (where this ‘tall hat’ been placed). This satirizes the relationship between a contemporary artist and their audience – whether integrate or make a fool of each other. They neglect the existence of a stable essence with a lack of specific metaphor, allowing various semantic interpretations. Generality emerges as a concrete subject only with the combination of participation, context, and the contemporality.

‘Welcome To Step on My Jewellery’ responds to the dilemma of territorial sovereignty between countries which is widely debated internationally.
‘Contemporary Heirlooms: Gold Circle and Red Circle’ depicts scepticism toward eternality by reinterpreting precious materials. With each time of owning the ‘jewellery’ through the circle-drawing ritual, gold will wear off a bit and the diamond creates pain. They reflect on the rapid loss of lives and painfully depletion left to the still-livings during the Covid-19 pandemic.

‘Inherit Within Highest Level / Inherit Within Lowest Level’ criticizes the nonsense of rigid stratification in a materialistic society.

‘Renaissance of Bartering’ reflects both progress and regress of trading—during the pandemic, virtual payment and shopping play important roles and are acceleratingly developed, which turns using the real money into a feeling of ‘renaissance’. Whereas people in some places start to barter food and essentials with each other to survive in the lockdown shortage, reminiscent of the ancient ritual.

Chong’s interest in jewellery was initiated from a doubtable instinct of its coincidental connection with the term Postmodernism. Utilizing the notion of possession in jewellery, this series experiments with the relationship between artist, participant, and audience.

‘Wear Tall Hat’, in Chinese, denotes a meaning of flattering somebody. The instruction could be interpreted as the jeweller’s willingness to ‘flatter the audience a tall hat’, or the audience wanting to flatter the jeweller by complying with her instruction, but such actions can make embarrass the wearer in public (where this ‘tall hat’ been placed). This satirizes the relationship between a contemporary artist and their audience – whether integrate or make a fool of each other. They neglect the existence of a stable essence with a lack of specific metaphor, allowing various semantic interpretations. Generality emerges as a concrete subject only with the combination of participation, context, and the contemporality.

‘Welcome To Step on My Jewellery’ responds to the dilemma of territorial sovereignty between countries which is widely debated internationally.
‘Contemporary Heirlooms: Gold Circle and Red Circle’ depicts scepticism toward eternality by reinterpreting precious materials. With each time of owning the ‘jewellery’ through the circle-drawing ritual, gold will wear off a bit and the diamond creates pain. They reflect on the rapid loss of lives and painfully depletion left to the still-livings during the Covid-19 pandemic.

‘Inherit Within Highest Level / Inherit Within Lowest Level’ criticizes the nonsense of rigid stratification in a materialistic society.

‘Renaissance of Bartering’ reflects both progress and regress of trading—during the pandemic, virtual payment and shopping play important roles and are acceleratingly developed, which turns using the real money into a feeling of ‘renaissance’. Whereas people in some places start to barter food and essentials with each other to survive in the lockdown shortage, reminiscent of the ancient ritual.

, ,