I’ve just uploaded lots of new things on Boticca, like the above pictured Encrusted Coral rings (available in black or silver), the Skin On Skin ring (a new addition to the We Were Here series), and a few Encrusted Stacking Sets

You can now see images of all the pieces from Multiples on my facebook page.  

Multiples is a series of earrings I created especially for the sixth annual exhibition of the same title at Heidi Lowe Gallery in Delaware, USA.

From furnishings and surfaces found at home, Guitar Hero jam sessions with friends to my corner shop quality ping pong bats, these wearable keepsakes are like hard copies of the past few months of my life narrated through a series of textures.

See if you can guess which texture is what!

Some images from my boyfriend’s latest series of portraits were featured on Boom today :)

Have a look at his website for more lovely photography.

Italian collective Studio Fludd was created by a group of young artists and designers who produce varying works across the creative field. Their blog is always a joy to read, showcasing captivating photographs of inspirations and work in progress.

I was drawn to these soft colours on geometric wooden shapes, which are part of their Spring collection of home decor and jewellery. You can buy their creations on their online shop and on Etsy.

Ignore (and please forgive) the slightly dubious titling of this post, because I really meant it in the nicest most sincere way possible! With Steve Jobs’ death and everything this past week I think everyone’s been thinking about how he’s changed not just Apple and their products but the way people relate to their gadgets and as a result, how we communicate to one another. (Cue in Apple’s latest promotional video for the iPhone 4S Siri voice recognition feature)

It really got me thinking about my own relationship with people and the internet, and the relationships that have sprung from the internet or have been aided so much by it that there would have been no relationship at all if it hadn’t existed. So here are a few people that I’ve gotten to know over the internet.

I met Travis in Bali in the summer of 2006 when I had just finished high school in Jakarta. I think we only saw each other like twice during that holiday but we ended up being such good pen pals over the years, recycling many envelopes and using up a lot of bandwidth. We oversaw the Facebook takeover from Myspace (although I believe he is still a Myspace loyalist at heart), exchanged art and music and met face to face probably once every 2 years either back in Bali or that one time I went to Melbourne to visit another friend. I think 30% of my music downloads have been influenced by this person and it’s weird to think what that 30% would have been otherwise if I hadn’t met him!

Travis is an amazing illustrator, graphic designer and multimedia artist.

And then I got to know Alexis, who is friends with Travis, through a melange of online social networking systems. We never actually met in person, but I had always admired her killer illustrations and photography. There are only so many ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ you can do before you think “I probably should just tell this person directly how cool I think she is before she decides that I’m a total weirdo”. I remember telling her this over a blogspot comment (now she’s on Tumblr of course) and since then we’ve been officially friends on Facebook. She is coming over to the UK in December so we’re organizing a meet and an art-swap. Isn’t it funny?

I only got really into Twitter this year and I’ve since ‘met’ a lot of really interesting personalities on there. To name but a few, Kate Pickering of @vanillainkUK who is also a jewellery designer and founder of Vanilla Ink studios. I admire her work and her way of bringing designers together in a much needed platform.

Just yesterday, I discovered @ForensicJewelry via Twitter. It’s a new research project investigating jewellery as a method of forensic identification in Policing, Law Enforcement & Disaster Victim Identification! Doesn’t that sound amazing? Being a bit of a hardcore Dexter fan (so over CSI) I was thrilled to find this and can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Last but not least, I recently got a lovely email from a designer who said she really enjoyed seeing my work on Klimt02. As it turns out she is half-Indonesian! We ended up exchanging emails about our current projects and talking about what a pity it is that we don’t see that many Indonesian contemporary jewellers. These kinds of conversations wouldn’t have happened if the two of us hadn’t been on Klimt02. 

Here’s an illustration I did in anticipation of xmas markets.

It will be printed onto various paper goods, greeting cards, and fabrics. 

For the time being you can order a print of it here.

Roger Arquer (RCA 2005) makes elegantly humane mouse traps using readymade and simple everyday objects.

“ The concept was developed thinking in a simple, elegant and efficient way to catch mice. These traps have been developed only to catch mice, not to kill them. It’s up to the catcher to decide the future of the mouse. “

Happy to confirm that I will be exhibiting my latest body of work, We Were Here, alongside prototypes and moulds from the process of its making, at the Aram Gallery in Covent Garden between July 28 - August 27 2011.

Alginate is a moulding material developed to create moulds which effectively retain extremely fine details. It is a natural material, and so will eventually ferment and decompose if not sealed hermetically or drained of moisture and left to dry. The alginate moulds on display will continue to change states on a daily basis over the duration of the exhibition, slowly ‘dying’.

Due to its temporary nature, most artists prefer to make moulds in more long lasting materials like silicone or plaster. I was personally very attracted to this non permanence of alginate as it was in keeping with the concept behind my collection. To me, my battle against alginate’s nature to wither and eventually lose the textures I worked so hard to retain mirrored the process of trying to recall a memory over and over again in an attempt to keep it safe. 

On each resulting cast prototype, a new detail may appear and others lost, much like the effect time often has on our memories and how it forces us to see them differently.

VICE: Hey man. Tell us a bit about yourself.
Jammie: My name’s Jammie. I was born in a hospital. Since then, I’ve started selling bottles of perfume made out of my own shit at £40 a pop.

How many have you sold so far?
I’ve sold 25 of the 85 bottles that I produced.

That’s pretty good going. Were you exposed to a lot of shit or have any unpleasant shit-related experiences when you were younger?
No more than any other little boy.

Does shit turn you on?
No, but I have seen that video on the internet.

That shit’s so 2007.
I know, sorry. That gag stunk.

If someone asked you to make your own scat video I bet you’d have some pretty strong ideas to bring to the table.
I don’t know exactly what I’d do. But it would be called Forrest Dump: Number 2.

Enough of this shit. So, to your perfume – how’d the idea come about?
I was reading a book by the French writer Dominique Laporte called The History Of Shit, which analyses the theoretical and social implications of faeces, and its role as a building material for cosmetics. It suggested that pleasant smells were used to cover bad smells, so it could be suggested that a bad smell could be used to cover pleasant smells.

Isn’t that an incredibly obvious thing to base an art stunt like this around?
Well I did some research and spoke to perfumers and scientists involved with smell at molecular levels. I learnt that there are molecules that are common to both good and bad smells – for example, the smell of faeces and many white flowers, such as orange blossoms and juniper, are from the molecule Skatol. They’re just there in varying concentrations.

Shit.
Yeah. Some of the companies that produce luxury perfumes also produce natural flavourings in common foods, and they often use the same synthetic chemical ingredients for both. They’re only emulations, but in a lot of foods you eat on a day-to-day basis are things like civet, a mimic of the anal secretions of the civet cat, and ambergis, which plays fakey at being a sperm whale’s gallstone. Then there are your more standard emulations of musk deer secretions and various tree secretions.

Did you have to spend a lot of time at home waiting to collect your shit, or did you shit into a plastic carrier bag that you carried around with you?
No, I didn’t need to get that much. It was pretty quick actually. It took me about a week to extract the “essential oils” from the “various raw materials”. The setting up and the mixing took the longest, so I didn’t have to carry around Tupperware or plastic bags.

How did you deal with the smell?
Nose pegs and open windows. My flatmates decided they’d rather be in another country.

No shit. I could ask you about the distillation process, but that’d be really boring right?
Yeah. Basically I use a bunch of containers and pipes and end up with jars of eau de shit.

How did you decide it was worth £40?
That’s the average price for a perfume of that size.

So what about the name? ‘Surplus’. Where’s that from?
I didn’t want to be like all the other schmucks and translate something from English into French just to sound glamourous. Surplus is the same in both languages, which negates the romantic connotations of the French language.

Have you ever worn your perfume?
Only at private views.

Man that’s some crazy shit!

interviewed by KATIA GANFIELD

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I met Jammie in foundation, never imagined that 4 years later he’d be making perfume out of his own turd. Good man.