About
Rachel Darbourne is a mixed media jeweller, educator, researcher, and project organiser. Her practice explores notions of value, what we value and why we value it, through material investigation and subversion of material hierarchies. The studio practice has a number of different enquires running concurrently, dialoguing and informing each other.
Rachel’s practice explores the emotional hierarchy that exists within object ownership in conjunction with the definitions of waste. There are the things that are thrown away without a thought and then there are the objects that live in a limbo space of no longer wanted but with a residual emotional connection making it hard or impossible to throw them away either. The charity shop has, to some extent, become a solution for this problem, a site of disposal for these objects that are still ‘of use’ or have a ‘value’. Consequently, these shops are the perfect resource or hunting ground for her creative practice.
In addition to emotional hierarchies, Rachel is also interested in material hierarchies, how values are ascribed to materials and how creative input can impact on these. These two value systems intertwine throughout all of her creative research.
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website design : Optimo Images
photography: Rod Gonzalez