Many hands make light work | Know like the back of your hand | Put your hands together | Cold hands warm heart | Show of hands | Dab hand | First Hand | Hand in hand | Hands on | Heavy handed | Old hand | Out of hand | Under hand | Change hands | Hand over | Hands full | Hands tied | In safe hands | Try your hand | Hands down | Second hand | In good hands | Helping hand | On hand | Get your hands dirty | Hand over fist | On the other hand | In your hands
The brief for CHAINreaction was to make a chain which would connect into a series of 49 chains, celebrating 10 years of the Handshake project and artists involved, each of us was responsible for the linking connection to our righthand neighbouring chain. This was a timely invitation to step back into making work that could function both as adornment or object.
Key concepts I wanted to express included interconnectivity, collectivity and a desire to celebrate the precious impermanence of life in these weird times. In response to being part of the HandShake6 team I was drawn to exploring the form of the hand as our tools for making, medium for touch, sign and gesture.
I made two of these bamboo ‘hands’ which connect together as a chain, with a hand at each end and can be worn or configured in multiple ways. Bamboo attracted me for it’s plentiful weedy growth, bony form and tubular structure. The movement of the joints was an important element to me. To invoke a sense of jointed fingers rather than being too floppy I burred out concave curves in the bamboo ends to accommodate the round beads and strung the work on braided steel wire rather for some additional flex.
