2019

NAOMI FILMER "A SENSUAL SHIVER"

Naomi Filmer is a contemporary designer/artist who describes her work as “objects about the body” rather than jewellery. 
By combining craftsmanship with new media and exploring recurrent themes such as fragmentation and isolation of the body, Filmer pushes the boundaries between sculpture and accessories, creating objects that occupy a middle ground between art and design. She redefines the very notion of the preciousness and permanence of jewellery through the use of materials such as ice or chocolate. 
Ice bracelets and earrings not only allude to impermanence and changeability but, when worn, require a certain degree of endurance, thus thematising the very act of wearing. More than just adorning the body, they emphasise the experience, sensibility and movement of the body. 
In more recent work, she pushes the boundaries of decorative objects/adornments towards sculpted elements that again take the body as the subject, but in a more abstract sense, investigating how it can be evoked. 
As she states, “the jewellery and accessories become interesting when they visualise life”, explaining further that her “approach to jewellery as a medium was far from the traditional conventions of precious jewellery and luxury accessories. Instead, my focus was on representing the human body as a physical subject, as form and space, using jewellery as the vehicle to do so. Over the years of working on various projects across a broad spectrum of jewellery, I concluded that what is important, dominant, and precious is us. Our flesh, our form, sensation, experience. Details of ourselves can be interpreted as adornment and abstracted as an object. I work with bodies to inform shape, manipulate material, direct process and even provide material with which to make. It has been a long time since I made work to be worn on the body, yet this thinking continues in my work.”

Naomi Filmer teaches at London College of Fashion and Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and HEAD Geneva. After completing a master’s degree in Metalwork and Jewellery at the Royal College of Art, Naomi built her reputation through catwalk collaborations with designers Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Anne Valerie Hash and others. Naomi’s work challenges the boundaries of what defines jewellery, focusing on the relationships between the body, the object, and the absence of an object. 
Her work has featured internationally in applied art exhibitions, noted for her sculptural forms and experimental use of materials (including ice, chocolate, glass, and rubber).