david watkins

The issues of scale, colour, placement on the body (and off the body), conditions for jewellery as sculpture, jewellery as object of contemplation, the body as site-specific location, notions of jewellery’s wearability and boundaries were germane to artists at the time and were all very much to the fore in Watkin’s work.

He began his career as a jazz pianist and sculptor, and his practice and understanding of these two disciplines reverberate throughout his work, bringing to it unexpected directions and innovations. At a formative moment in the 1960s Watkins had worked on special effects for Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, the film 2001, designing and creating model spacecraft to high levels of demand and precision.

via VADS and Victoria and Albert Museum