Talking point: News analysis

When Charles Saatchi gave his collection of art from Young British Artists to the Royal Academy of Arts for its Sensation exhibition in 1997, it caused a public uproar and media frenzy. On show were such notorious pieces as Damien Hirst’s shark in formaldehyde, Tracey Emin’s tent called Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 and Jake and Dinos Chapman’s installations featuring child mannequins that had had their noses replaced with penises and anuses where their mouths should have been.

However, it was Marcus Harvey’s Myra that drew the most outrage. It was a portrait of the Moors’ murderer Myra Hindley, made up of hundreds of children’s handprints.

The painting was picketed, two demonstrators threw ink and eggs at it and Hindley herself even sent a letter from prison suggesting the portrait be removed because the work showed disregard for the emotional suffering of her victims’ families.

Eventually, David Gordon, then secretary of the Royal Academy of Arts, issued a statement saying: “The majority view inside the academy was that millions of images of Myra Hindley have been reproduced in newspapers and magazines. Hindley’s image is in the public domain; part of our consciousness; an awful part of our recent social history; a legitimate subject for journalism - and for art.”

It was this concept of a “legitimate subject for art” that jewellery designer Nick Fitch, owner of jewellery store Nicholas James in Hatton Garden, found himself debating when several people reacted badly to his sovereign rings inspired by Jack the Ripper and aired their views online.

“I was completely surprised,” says Fitch. “I couldn’t believe what people were posting. We’ve always been a very commercial business and I’ve always wanted to throw a curve ball. When I designed these rings, my first and foremost motivation was getting sovereigns back up to the top of the jewellery food chain.”

Fitch was accused of “glamourising a man who killed women” and “normalising…a horrendous attitude towards women”, the latter because one of the rings was entitled Slag, despite the word not getting its current meaning until the late 1950s.

Fitch is not the only jewellery designer to incur public wrath. Reid Peppard, the designer behind label RP/Encore, uses taxidermied animals in her pieces and casts from dead creatures. She was targeted on Facebook by people who had misconstrued her work.

“I felt upset that people were missing the point so badly,” explains Peppard. “A lot of the anger [in those comments] came from people who are passionate about animal welfare.
I share their concerns, and to be made out as a heartless animal slaughterer was not at all what I hoped for.

“These people seemed to be taking issue with the work on a superficial level - i.e. dead animal equals Cruella de Vil. They are not engaging with the work or interested in doing so. I wish they would do a little research into where I get my animals from.”

It is also what people don’t take offence to that makes controversy in art so fascinating.

Designer Katie Rowland created a collection called Love and Faith, which featured a cuff with the word “c**t” on it.

“Strangely enough, I didn’t receive any backlash to those pieces. The text-based jewellery essentially launched my career into the jewellery world,” says Rowland.

“I love the English language, yet I still don’t know why this one word has the ability to shock. As a woman, I feel that we should reclaim the word and the jewellery pieces I created with so-called offensive words on them reflect that desire.”

It was also a desire to challenge perceptions and conventions that inspired Jasmine Alexander to create her Rock ‘n’ Roll Hero at Home piece. It shows the traditional figure of Christ on the cross, but without the cross and instead with a beer in one hand and a cigar in the other.

“I find Christ to be one of the ballsiest men to ever walk the planet - a great and possibly unparalleled man, but a man nonetheless. I’ve always been saddened by the way he has been elevated to a position beyond our reach,” explains Alexander.

“During one of my musings over these points, I noticed that if you lay the image down and imagine the cross not to be there, he simply looks like one of the boys, chilling in the park in the sunshine.”

Alexander has only ever had one negative comment about the piece and that was from an associate who warned her against showing it in Las Vegas because they believed the US customers would react badly to it. A fear that was unfounded.

So should jewellery be a medium through which controversial topics are explored?

“I don’t think it ever occurred to me that jewellery was a discipline with a set of sanctioned topics,” says Peppard. “I studied art at Central Saint Martins, and with that background it seems natural to challenge and provoke people’s preconceptions.

I’ve applied this philosophy to my jewellery making.”

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