The many faces of Lisa Walker
Lisa Walker’s stitched, padded, beaded and intuitively assembled (not quite) heads will be on display at Te Atamira until April. The works by one of Aotearoa’s most influential contemporary jewellers, begin life in the recognisable shape of the human head before shifting into something familiar, but uniquely unsettled.
Each piece emerges through a series of decisions, rather than a fixed plan. Walker explains that she likes to use different softer materials including fabric, thread and beads. She’s been making jewellery since the late 80s. The jewellery is about 25cm long and sits on your sternum quite comfortably.
“I came from a goldsmithing beginning, so just working in metal and with these sorts of very ancient traditional goldsmithing tools and equipment,” Walker says. “Throughout the decades I have pretty much explored what jewellery is and what it can be.”
Her experience is broad and her exhibition features all she’s learnt over the years. Her work has been shown widely here and internationally, including exhibitions at Te Papa. Faces and parts of the human body have crept into Walker’s work for many years, and she walks the line between its most basic form and creating decorative objects.
“What I’m making, they’re so human-like, of course, they’re heads. So what does that mean – am I trying to make a person? Actually, no. Am I trying to make a character? No, I’m not either. I’m putting these elements together and looking at all the different possibilities.”
The colour palette of the heads is inspired by the works of Hilma af Klint, a Swedish artist whose paintings are widely considered to be among the first major abstract works in Western art history. Walker saw an exhibition of af Klint’s works in Wellington and was blown away by the colours used.
“To me, every single colour she used was beautiful, and I’d never had that before. So I’ve kept pretty true to that, in that when I see a colour it has to really resonate to me that it’s a beautiful colour, and you know that word ‘beautiful’ is quite broad.”
She explains that it’s then a game of playing with what works together and what clashes, always trying to create tension between them. Walker will go into detail about her work, practices and the things she thinks about during the development of the show at a one-off artist talk on 8 August. There’s also a jewellery-making workshop that will involve investigation into the materials that we have in our environment, and the potential these materials have to be made into jewellery. In the 3 – 4 weeks leading up to the workshop, participants are invited to begin gathering a large and varied collection of materials – the more diverse and unexpected, the better.
Lisa’s work will be available for purchase at the exhibition, too. She summarises her work, “I made an ear necklace. I painted beautiful ears across pieces of wood. This became an earring — an ear below your ear. Then there was a head, a pendant for your chest — a face beneath your face.”
HEAD opens at Te Atamira on Thursday, 25 June, with an opening event at 6.30pm. It will then run until Wednesday, 12 August. Lisa Walker will also present her artist talk and a jewellery workshop on Saturday, 8 August. Head to teatamira.nz for more information and to book into the workshop or talk.
