'Diamond Twist' necklace

Necklace, 2024
Japanese & Czech glass seed beads

From 'Fibonacci on Holiday', exhibited 5 June - 13 July.

ornament - implement - navigational tool - measuring device – semaphore flag – football scarf – wall drawing - picture frame - 

These brightly coloured beaded necklaces, by Manon van Kouswijk, slip between diagrammatic formalism when presented as a group on a wall, and loose, joyful wearability on the body. A first series titled Beads for Buildings and Bodies was shown at Alta Forma last year in the exhibition Wall Arms & Table Legs. In this second series of works, Manon pushes the ideas embodied in those earlier works to new logical, but surprising, points.

Glass seed beads, a highly decorative material, are used in a methodical way: numerical sequences and elementary geometrical shapes are beaded to become objects that can be pinned on the wall as 3-dimensional material drawings or worn on the body in multiple ways. In this shift from architecture to body, from the wall to the chest, they transform from static geometry to flexible, playful jewellery.