WEARABLE ART

Jewellery collection, by Lynda Benglis, for Loewe

- HANNAH SILVER

Colour, form and materiality collide in a collaboration between Spanish label Loewe and American sculptor Lynda Benglis, together bringing a seductive fizz to jewellery design.

The new collection comprises seven concepts that reference Benglis’ work, as well as the large- scale sculptures that commandeered Loewe’s S/S24 women’s catwalk. A sensuous reinterpretation of Benglis’ ongoing series Elephant Necklace (itself inspired by the blown-out tractor tyres strewn on the sides of countless American highways), the great, hulking bronze formations appeared as if smoothed and manipulated by the artist’s hand, the dynamic marks of making still visible on the material.

Benglis builds on this temporality in her jewellery for Loewe, translating free-flowing forms into overblown yet functional jewellery. ‘Nature is always the answer,’ says Benglis on the raw and instinctive nature of her pieces. ‘I wanted the pieces to embody states of metamorphosis. A sense of growth with time, change and rebirth. Mirroring life’s transformations within art ideas, so we continue to think beyond thought to the absurd, in order to explore material excess.’