Join The Car-Crash Set: Jewellery, Violence, Ethics

Jewellery can have great power in mediating the confusing, frightening and dangerous world in which young people sometimes find themselves, allowing them a physical manifestation and cathartic release of their pain and fear, an object which reminds them that someone has listened, believed and cared. Working with five young people, photographer, Simon Murphy, and I documented a series of narratives exploring how violence has affected their lives, producing a body of work which was subsequently exhibi ted at the Centre for Contemporary Craft (CCA) in Pittsburgh, USA, as part of their ?Enough Violence: Artists Speak Out? exhibition in 2014. This paper is a personal account of the background to the exhibition and the responses to it and suggests ways in which this type of work could be developed by other jewellers. I take an honest, self-critical look at the importance of the rigorous ethical thinking in creating this kind of work, especially in relation to the authenticity of voice and the ownership of transcribed narratives.