Artist Statement

Fool’s Gold provides an insight into India as a beautifully chaotic ecosystem, through my personal understanding as a familiar outsider. My frequent travels led me to experience the country as an inescapable food chain illustrating a world of contradictions — rich and poor, ugly and beautiful. I have become deeply interested in the centrality of adornment as a social marker and what it means for something or someone to be truly valuable. Creating jewellery made from contrasting materials — some in valuable silver and stones, others in rusted-metals and shattered-glass — I reflect the intricate nature of ornamentation and the hidden meaning of elegance.

Artwork Process

I am drawn to beautiful things, humble trinkets and objects that ignore a materialistic attachment. While traveling through India, I began accumulating broken glass and rusted pieces of metal, creating a collection of industrial found objects — a ritual and linking thread throughout my work. I began to create miniature sculptures through a process that I describe as 3D collage. As my collection grew and I became more familiar to Indian culture, I took interest in women’s jewellery and its relationship to society, prompting my desire to create a conversation through jewellery and a cluster of sculptures

About the Artist

Name: Ruby Sinclair
School: Queensland Academies Creative Industries Campus
Artwork: Fool’s Gold
Media: Found objects, clay, plaster, driftwood, cheesecloth, sand, gravel

From a young age, I have always been driven by aesthetics. I am drawn to colour, texture and form, elements which have surrounded me growing up in Malaysia and Spain, and now, through my frequent travels to India. I am starting to find comfort in creating balance between the need to evoke meaningful conversation around the ethical discomfort I feel in our world and the aesthetic choices that I am so drawn to. I have a fire in my belly to continue to develop as an artist through tertiary study, and I thank ‘Creative Generation’ for further igniting this.