Sean O’Connell / Australia

Australia born 1972

Sean O’Connell’s Spark series of rings amplify and illuminate fourteen materials. The associated Material studies: Spark discharge, 2015, images depict the flow of electricity through these materials. To make the images, simple rings in various materials were positioned on top of photographic paper and bombarded with electricity from above.

These rings and photographs are a poetic trigger to imagine the material world. By exploring and depicting materials, including their qualities, potential, origins and applications, contemporary jewellery, art and design reconnect us with fundamental aspects of the physical realm, questioning the relationship between the practitioner and the industrial and natural landscape. Materials are political, strategic, emotive, mercantile: their extraction has shaped the landscape of nature and labour; economies of material transfer and trade have influenced societies; and materials have informed culture and consumerism. Modern materials are tools of industry that shape the economic and ecological realities of our time.

BIO

O’Connell studied Jewellery and Object Design at the Australian National University, as well as Gold and Silversmithing at the Sydney College of the Arts where he is currently undertaking study towards his doctorate.