LIKE: AN EXPERIMENT IN INTERPRETATION — A project recalled by Stella

What happens when objects meet words and words meet objects? Back in 2008 I curated a jewellery project called LIKE. LIKE was an experiment in interpretation: a translation from object to description and back to object. I made a small object, sent it to a poet, and the poem about this three-dimensional form became the basis for nine jewellers to create their own interpretation of the original. Could the artists remake this object using only the poetic description? When the original is hidden and analysis of language is required, what will happen? How did their own making habits assist or hinder the process of creating an object where the only guidelines were a handful of words — a description that was sometimes clear, but often oblique. If the writer had been given the task of writing an instruction manual, a step-by-step guide, the resultant objects would have more alike. But this wasn’t the goal. It was a translation project, an exploration of language and communication. An exploration of both the visual and verbal. Words describe. Visual language — colour, form, scale, texture — also ‘talks’. The poet, Bill Manhire, studied the object, tried to get its measure, and described its appearance as well as its demeanour. There were clues in the poem and at times clarity of description. Yet a problem remained. The object was an alien, difficult to assimilate or easily align with something known. It was something almost familiar, but ultimately foreign. In the language of poetry it became a new thing. For the curator, the words were unexpected. The floor was open. The translation began. For what happens when we are asked to decipher what we see or what we experience? Each telling will be different. Are we more attuned today to our surroundings compared to yesterday? If we glance, what do we miss? If we study with heated concentration do we create a story that does not exist? Are our senses reliable and is our language sufficient? For LIKE, the jewellers needed to read and decipher the words of Manhire; they needed to know how to read this poem pulling from it the ‘clues’ that would be the keys to making. It wasn’t intended to trick or obfuscate, but it did prove challenging. Translation was necessary. It was surprising how various the resultant objects were, yet all expressed elements of the original. They were a family of objects related to each other. The process of translation, although flawed and sometimes deliberately sabotaged, was an experiment in interpretation that captured the essence of the original and held within its translated parts some aspects of the makers/interpreters. (The exhibition catalogue includes all 10 objects, responses from the jewellers about the process, an introduction by Augusta Szark and essay by Louise Garrett, and Bill Manhire’s poem.)