SHELLEY NORTON
Re Cubed (Girl Before A Mirror)
New Zealand artist Shelley Norton’s second exhibition with Ornamentum finds her continuing a process of reconfiguring plastic shopping bags into jewelry.
Re Cubed finds the artist picking apart Pablo Picasso's painting Girl Before A Mirror. Elements are pulled from the canvas and transformed into wearables by knitting with different color plastic from discarded shopping bags and subsequently melting it into a patterned sheet, often adding additional layers upon the surface to finalize the composition. In l'oeil, le nez, la bouche, Norton has plucked the eye, nose and mouth from the subject of Picasso's artwork for 3 large, separate earrings, recognizable when arranged as shown, abstracted when removed from the pattern. Other details from the painting are found in necklace and brooches; the arm, breasts, the wallpaper behind the figure... even the frame of the Mirror is woven into three individual long and splendidly-chaotic necklaces.
Re Cubed (Girl before a Mirror)
Pablo Picasso painted Girl before a Mirror in 1932, a year that is referred to as his wonder year - being one of great artistic and personal change for him.
When I viewed this work at MoMA in 2019 I was greatly taken with the interplay of swooping lines and bold colours. I wanted to meander through this painting, to reconstruct and jewellerise the jigsaw like representations to interact with the living.
Shelley Norton
2022