From Walter to Valerie / Lin Cheung & Veronika Fabian
Lin Cheung and Veronika Fabian are one of the participants in 'From Walter to Valerie'. Click here for more information on their project C H A I N.
Biography Lin Cheung
Lin Cheung (b. 1971, UK) explores jewellery both materially and conceptually. Her work questions its established uses and meanings, examining the role of jewellery in adornment, in the formation of identity or as a trigger of memory and emotion. Underpinned by a detailed knowledge of materials and processes, Cheung’s distinctive approach to making jewellery offers a witty and poignant response to the human condition. Cheung is a Senior Lecturer and Stage 3 Lead Tutor in the BA (Hons) Jewellery Design course at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She won the Arts Foundation Award for jewellery in 2001 and was selected for Jerwood Contemporary Makers in 2008. Cheung was a finalist for the BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour Craft Prize in 2017 and is the recipient of the 2018 Françoise van den Bosch Award.
Biography Veronika Fabian
The work of Veronika Fabian (b. 19XX, HU) is often inspired by a significant shift in her personal life that led her to leave behind a career as a risk analyst in banking to become a jewellery artist. The pieces she makes are often influenced by this new-found freedom of unused potential and surfacing ambitions. Veronika reinterprets and repositions recognizable everyday items and jewellery forms to give them new meaning from a different perspective. These well-known forms are a common language that offer a strong foundation on which she can build her ideas as to what value and jewellery are. Veronika is completing her final year of study in the BA (Hons) Jewellery Design course at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She has won several awards and scholarships for her work, including a 2017 Cartier Scholarship and the 2017 William Atkinson Scholarship. Veronika has also won the 2017 Leathersellers’ Award from The Leathersellers' Company, London, and her jewellery has been selected for the special exhibition at Schmuck 2018.
Project: C H A I N
Our intention with this piece was to allow the chain to escape or, in other words, to reinterpret its expected purpose as a bearer of other jewellery.
Such a collection of links rarely gets a chance to be the jewellery itself and is frequently referred to as the ‘chain’, which only ever has a supporting role. The assumption is that it will always be subservient to the main jewel.
In a deliberate attempt to shift from the expected to the unknown (in terms of chains), our approach to making was part stream of consciousness and part diligent goldsmithing. Through this process we hoped to reach unpredictable outcomes in form and emphasis and thus to reframe the object at hand. This enabled the chain to assume an identity, to encourage awareness of its own potential in jewellery and to help brand this new personality as
C H A I N – a chain with its own ego.
As a new duo, the making of this work was as much a conversation as a traditional craft process and it was during our discourse that we celebrated our similarities and remained fascinated by our differences. And while we could both rally around our school, we were simultaneously dwarfed by this vast and historic institution that, like any seat of learning, can both nurture and stifle in equal measure as the pressure to both impress and amaze weighs heavily on staff and students alike. Our response is not to buckle under such stress, but, like the chain, to distribute the load and effort across the project with a playful and even satirical levity.
We took the decision to have some fun and responded with a slick photo shoot of the finished necklace to put our thoughts into a context with which Central Saint Martins is so familiar: fashion. But this is a parody of excess and kitsch that, combined with our double portraits, does not implore you to throw off your chains, but rather to wear them with pride.
Such a collection of links rarely gets a chance to be the jewellery itself and is frequently referred to as the ‘chain’, which only ever has a supporting role. The assumption is that it will always be subservient to the main jewel.
In a deliberate attempt to shift from the expected to the unknown (in terms of chains), our approach to making was part stream of consciousness and part diligent goldsmithing. Through this process we hoped to reach unpredictable outcomes in form and emphasis and thus to reframe the object at hand. This enabled the chain to assume an identity, to encourage awareness of its own potential in jewellery and to help brand this new personality as
C H A I N – a chain with its own ego.
As a new duo, the making of this work was as much a conversation as a traditional craft process and it was during our discourse that we celebrated our similarities and remained fascinated by our differences. And while we could both rally around our school, we were simultaneously dwarfed by this vast and historic institution that, like any seat of learning, can both nurture and stifle in equal measure as the pressure to both impress and amaze weighs heavily on staff and students alike. Our response is not to buckle under such stress, but, like the chain, to distribute the load and effort across the project with a playful and even satirical levity.
We took the decision to have some fun and responded with a slick photo shoot of the finished necklace to put our thoughts into a context with which Central Saint Martins is so familiar: fashion. But this is a parody of excess and kitsch that, combined with our double portraits, does not implore you to throw off your chains, but rather to wear them with pride.