Ms Melinda Young

Melinda Young is a contemporary jeweller and craftsperson whose practice-based research moves across contemporary jewellery, small objects, speculative vessels, textiles and curatorial projects.  The research Melinda undertook for her Master of Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts was concerned with re-presenting the natural state of the body using the written and visual language of scent, abjection, the body and botany alongside sensory materials such as soap and wax, to reference the interior and exterior landscapes of the body via actual and speculative jewellery objects. Her ongoing research in this area deals with the memorative affect of scent as expressed through cultural constructs of (invisible) adornment.

Recently Melinda's research has shifted from an investigation of the interior landscapes of the body to the exterior, the spaces the body inhabits and moves through – an awareness of the body in the landscape via artificial re-presentation of ‘the natural’ and most recently a focus on the actions of making – the line, the stitch, the trace. A residency at Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery was a significant immersive research experience which led to the development of a new body of work, silver city dreams, an investigation of place through wearables, speculative vessels and small-scale textile works.

Since 2007 Melinda has worked on a collaborative research project with Adelaide based artist Lauren Simeoni: unnatural, naturally. Lauren and Melinda work together to explore ideas of permanence and impermanence and question of what it is to be ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’ via material use, making methods and the imposition of project briefs and extending to viewer response, participatory actions and behavioural observation/manipulation. Together they have presented over 15 iterations of their research through exhibitions, curatorial projects, workshops and participatory public artworks in Australia and overseas.

Melinda is currently undertaking a cross-disciplinary PhD at the Australian Centre for Culture Environment Society and Space (ACCESS), University of Wollongong. Her research explores how the concept of place has developed as a common touchstone for the maker, wearer/user and viewer of contemporary jewellery and small craft objects by investigating how ‘objects carry traces’ (Ingold:2013 p.11) and how these traces help to distinguish and form personal narratives. Collected materials (both natural and ‘unnatural’) continue to be a constant presence in Melinda's work; her methodology includes the recovery of leftover materials which are used to develop narrative, direct meaning and context for her research and its physical outcomes. The language of materials, collection and (re)use along with the action of moving through the landscape, the linearity of a journey rather than the abstract fictive space of the ‘excursion’ increasingly informs the production of Melinda's work and the liminal space of the journey is frequently the site of making.