The first edition of JUNK: rubbish to gold took place over 2015 in the UK and finished in a live performance, exhibition and Auction at the School of Jewellery, Birmingham.
The Collecting
We worked with eleven partnering charities since November 2014 and have received over 732 kilos of jewellery from them. This has involved driving to the charities, collecting the bags and bags of jewellery, storing it and sorting through it.
As we sorted through the piles and piles of jewellery we began to find many treasures. Here is a teeny tiny selection of just some of the treasures we have found in sorting through these hundred and hundreds of kilos.
Between the 9th-13th November 2015 the JUNK: rubbish to gold performance and installation was held at the School of Jewellery during their 125th anniversary celebrations. This involved 31 jewellers from all over UK and beyond coming to the School to turn the JUNK jewellery on display into reimagined works of art. This was live-streamed throughout the week and broadcast on YouTube as well as being shown live on a gigantic screen at the mac birmingham.
You can still go to watch these performances online in real time by following the links here.
Here you can watch the five day performance squashed down into under 3 minutes:
The makers and jewellers who took part in this performance were:
Following the performance between the 16th-27th of November 2015 the recreated jewellery objects will be displayed at the School of Jewellery as well as online at Crafthaus. Throughout this exhibition the audience had the opportunity to bid on the jewellery via silent auction.
As part of the project we have received donations from very many generous people. Below are just some of the jewellery stories connected to the objects donated to the project.
The Domb's Family Donation
We were approached by Steven Domb near the beginning of the project who had a collection of chandelier crystals of all sorts, shapes and sizes he wished to donate.
But these were more than just crystals: they had a fantastic story behind them.
