golden skin

This project is full of stories.

golden skin consists of a series of personal and potent metal punches that can be printed around the outside of the ring by the wearer.  Marking the ring is a defined, deliberate act.  The wearer chooses their story to tell and goes through specific, perhaps even ritualised actions, to imprint this message onto the ring. The resulting imprint is the visual trace, a reminder of the message but also the moment and act of punching the message.  The wearer chooses the frequency of marking and can re-punch over existing marks, creating layers of imprints, or can choose to re-melt the ring and begin anew. 

This ring and series of punches contain my stories: stories and intimate reminders I need to tell myself now and might want to tell my ‘future self’.  They comprise of loved ones’ handwriting, and prints or imagery gathered from remarkable or mundane but special moments I want to carry with me.

Normally gold is from a mix of continually recycled sources.  But this gold I am using is unrefined, direct from an alluvial mine, direct from the earth:  it was handed to me by the person that carried it from the mine in Honduras.  So the line is very direct.  This mining company (Goldlake Investments Ltd) has their own refinery but it was a unique opportunity to work with unrefined gold. 

Goldlake has provided this alluvial gold with the intention that it be recycled and handed on to another student to work with at the end of this project.  When it is recycled, my imprints are melted with it but are enclosed, encased within this gold.  And the next student to work with this gold is using gold with my life message in it.  It’s the very beginning of the cycle.

I would like to thank Goldlake Investments Ltd for loaning the gold from their alluvial gold mine; the methods to extract this gold involved no use of chemicals, no net loss of biodiversity and direct support to communities around the mine.