Chap.5-41 : Through the Windows — Red Chamber and City Half Seen

Acrylic, architecture and the emotions behind the city

These two brooches below use acrylic as a key material, but in very different ways. I wanted to explore how the city can be seen through windows, colours and layers, and how these views can reflect our emotions and memories.

Red Chamber — Passion Behind the Window

For Red Chamber, the structure was already clearly formed in my mind before I started making it. As I assembled the components, everything fitted together surprisingly well. The red acrylic sheet and rod, perforated steel, geometric frame and brass pipe structure seemed to find their places naturally.

I have always loved visiting the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, especially the beautiful Waterwall at the entrance. When my daughter was little, she would spend ages playing with the water there with her friend. It was such a playful and happy place for them.

For me, however, walking through that entrance has always brought different emotions. I have enormous respect and admiration for the artworks inside, but I have never entered with a completely peaceful mind. There is always a mixture of excitement, aspiration and perhaps a little frustration.

One of the most impressive spaces is the NGV's Salon Gallery, often referred to as the "Red Room," with its magnificent red walls and densely displayed European paintings. There is something overwhelming and beautiful about this room, filled with art history and tradition.

I often wonder why contemporary jewellery cannot have a major exhibition in such an important art institution. The late Mari Funaki achieved extraordinary recognition, but I still wish to see contemporary jewellery represented more prominently in the wider art world.

Perhaps that is why this brooch became so red.

Red represents love, affection and passion, but also danger, aggression, warning and sacrifice. These contradictory meanings reflect my own complicated relationship with the art world. I love it deeply, yet I also question its boundaries and hierarchies.

The red acrylic sits behind the black geometric framework, almost like looking into a building through its windows. It is colourful and playful, but there is also something intense about it.

Perhaps Red Chamber is not simply about a building. It is about my passion for art, my aspirations and the irony of loving an art world that can sometimes feel difficult to enter.

City Half Seen — A Foggy City

I have taken so many photographs of Melbourne over the years, often looking through windows at ordinary buildings, walls, pipes and architectural structures.

What interests me is not necessarily the famous architecture, but the everyday city. Sometimes the view becomes particularly beautiful when it is raining or foggy. Parts of the buildings disappear, while other parts remain visible.

I wanted to express this uncertain view in a brooch.

At first, I wondered how I could physically create the appearance of fog. Then I experimented with transparent acrylic, rubbing its surface against emery paper to create a frosted effect.

It worked perfectly!

The acrylic became cloudy and translucent, allowing the metal structures behind it to appear only partially. Some details are visible, while others seem to disappear into the background.

I combined these frosted acrylic panels with perforated steel, brass pipes, old watch components and patinated metal surfaces. The greenish patina adds another layer of age and atmosphere, while the old watch components suggest the passage of time.

What fascinates me is that the structures behind the acrylic still exist, even when we cannot see them clearly.

Perhaps this is also how we experience a city. We think we know the buildings, streets and familiar surroundings, but our memories and emotions constantly change the way we see them.

Having lived in Melbourne for many years, I sometimes feel that I know this city very well, yet at other times it still feels unfamiliar.

City Half Seen is about that uncertain relationship between what is visible and what remains hidden.

Two Windows, Two Different Emotions

Looking at these two brooches together, I realise that acrylic has become much more than a material for representing windows.

The red acrylic reveals my passion and conflicting feelings about art, while the frosted acrylic creates a quieter, more uncertain view of the city.

One is intense and emotional. The other is subtle and mysterious.

Both are my personal ways of reading the city through materials, structures and memories.

And perhaps that is what this new collection, The City and Its Uncertain Walls — Brooches, is becoming: not simply representations of architecture, but reflections of the emotions and experiences that exist within it.