ABOUT THE WORK

We are Bella and Asher joining forces under kin to bring you ADORNED. It arrived through a shared yearning to reinvigorate the lost meaning of what it is to adorn and investigate the ways of how people seem to lose sight of what is truly important. Joined by Sunshine Coast ceramicist, Tess Miller and contemporary Indigenous artist, Chloe Watego the dance language is transposed into exquisite works of visual art. Their intuitive creative accompaniment represents the eternally generative capacity we all have, particularly as women. The soundscape, created by Jag Popham, is an evolving collection of the delicate sounds of our own ornaments, phrygian scales, creaking bamboo and other elements from nature swirled together to take us to the water's edge, or deep into the forest, or back to a time when to adorn was functional, connective and sacred.

This work serves as a collective ceremony of deep time reflecting on our relationships with the ornaments we choose to carry through our lives. It acknowledges the degeneration of humans’ care and connection to the Earth’s bounty and remembers the potential to return to balance, interconnectedness and prayers of thanks for all things in our lives.

ADORNED brings forward common archetypal dis-eases that seem to consume us whenever our relationship to object goes unchecked. We humans are experts at extracting the thing itself, leaving behind its context and importance, distracted by its shiny, hollow shell. Without a rooting in animacy and spirituality we can easily be mesmerized, crazed or drunken by the glimmer of a pendant, the promise of more, the addiction to collecting or the feeling of everyone's eyes on us wanting what we’ve got. Dragons, Sirens, Gollums and Wendigos visit as we navigate the world at this over-paced and undervalued time in our history.

Want to listen to the podcast that transformed thought into art?
Universe, Adorned: Ornament in Culture, Cosmos, and Consciousness
Joshua Schrei, The Emerald Podcast

artists
asher bowen-saunders - dancer/creator
bella hood - dancer/creator
jag popham - sound designer
chloe watego - visual artist
tess miller - ceramacist

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