BODE WELL

Generating objects of good will, made in good company

Paris Fontana, Naasicaa Larsen, Emma Megannety, Fiona Simmons, Julia Storey, Kim Victoria, Karla Way
Presented by the Fortunae Jewellery Studio

Text by Karla Way

The studio

This year marks the 10th anniversary of this studio space.

Over the decade these Kim and Fiona have been collecting people to share the space, and it has evolved into a community organised around making, where knowledge circulates, growth is supported, achievements are celebrated, and harder times softened in company. With care and creation at its core, The Fortunae has become much more than an assemblage of benches and tools. It is a place where values are recognised and shared, working processes are nurtured, technical and material skills are mutually appreciated, personal rituals are known, and good intentions are held in common.

The studio’s name, The Fortunae, draws on the Roman goddess of luck and abundance, pluralised for those striving to generate it. Fortuna is a conceptual deity whose meaning has shifted subtly across history and time, renewed by every community that engaged with her, however, she has always been the embodiment of chance and good fortune. She exists in this space through the communal support, good company, and shared values – conditions that allow each maker to flourish.

Flourishing was the goal of the original two, Bode Well is another expression of it.

The gifting

For this project, each maker gifted a tangible object, ephemeral or enduring, to an allocated colleague. This was an act of noticing, of seeing someone’s qualities, preferences, and celebrating their conceptual and material instincts. These considered selections were the gestures and symbols that set the project in motion.

Seeing a proclivity for detailed nuance and symbolic sensitivity in another’s practice, a wish to be protected, grounded, and met with every good thing.
Experience of the joy of a radiant friendship and spoonfuls of wishes for a prosperous sunshine-y path ahead.
An observation of a love of romantic forms - full blooms, silver light, the heart as sacred space are offered as a wish for abundance, magic and luck.
The noticing of an affinity with the deep seas and the night sky, and a wish for prosperity and the perfect conditions for a beautiful family to grow.
The recognition of a season of change, welcoming in luck and opportunity. Gifted with a genuine wish for a time of abundance, joy and a sense of ease moving onwards.
An acknowledgement of the spaces that have been shaped for loved ones, and a reminder to take pleasure in the life beautifully built.
An invitation to revisit the feeling of a place, of inspiration and deep learning, and a wish to be seen and known for what is within.

The receiving of these offerings served as a catalyst for experimentation, new making, recalling past concepts, revisiting past work. Whether the gift overtly or obliquely informed the work that followed, the spirit of these gestures have been absorbed and carried forward. In this way, acts of boding well generate further acts of boding well.

What objects carry

There are cycles at play in this exhibition, between intention and object, maker and wearer, the metaphysical and the held-in-the-hand. It is an old cycle.

Across cultures and deep into history, objects have been made and chosen to hold what cannot be physically passed between people – a wish, a memory, an agreement. Particular stones given and worn for their power to protect, meaningful jewels heaped on the bodies of the dead to grant safe passage between realms, a lock of hair embedded in a pendant to keep someone close, rings exchanged as a heartful pledge between two people, objects given and received to honour and confirm an allegiance.

Amulet, talisman, charm - each have a distinct meaning yet have been blurred across centuries of use. An amulet was made to repel harm, a talisman to attract good fortune, and a charm a spoken or written intention fixed in material form. Each was understood to house something, enchanted or charged with a force, a spirit, a concentrated will that emanated when the object was worn or carried. What they all share is the single underlying idea that an object made with care and given with purpose carries something of that purpose forward. The object becomes a vessel.

Jewellery is particularly well suited to this kind of charge. It is worn on the body and carried close. It travels. It can be personalised. Its materials are often precious and unique. Its origins, natural or otherwise, are sometimes held visibly within it or transformed entirely by the maker’s hands into something unrecognisable from its source. This transformation is its own kind of enchantment. Whether the maker’s hand is visible or concealed, the object holds within it the hours, decisions, the knowledge and hand-head expression of the person who made it. Most of this remains invisible to the wearer, but it is felt. This invisible part, sensed but not seen, is a powerful part that pulls us in.

Jewellery accumulates meaning through use, being worn, exchanged, passed on, constantly re-charged. It becomes a record carried on the body through a life, and what accrues to it through relationship and time becomes as much a part of it as the material it is made from.

The flourishing

What you are looking at in this exhibition are bodies of work that are the material responses to the initial gestures and intentions.

One traces how we collect and cleverly assemble the significant people and things in our lives to bring joy and possibility to all of them.

Another reflects on deep interiors and creates space for the nurturing of multiple perspectives.

One considers the years of specific conditions required for these precious relationships and people to grow.

Another holds the tension of carrying, holding, releasing, and calling them back.

One explores how they nourish us and create safe joyful space for imagination and expression.

Another contemplates how we honour and remember them through personal rituals, symbolism and adornment.

And one finds them still, remaining buoyant and protective through ebbs and flows and across oceans on distant shorelines - kept robust, beautiful, shiny.

All of this, in the end, is the human impulse to wish well. To hope for smooth sailing, an easy road, joyful relationships, whether the bond is familial, romantic, or the mighty platonic. That impulse is central to all of us at The Fortunae. What began as an internal act of goodwill between seven makers is now an exhibition, an offering directed outward.

BODE WELL

The studio

The gifting

What objects carry

The flourishing

Further reading