Central Saint Martins at the University of Arts London is showcasing Caroline Broadhead’s work from four decades in the field of fine and applied arts. Using three-dimensional objects in the form of jewellery, textiles and furniture, Broadhead questions the conventions and limits of design, especially with regard to the human body.
Caroline Broadhead started with jewellery, but she became quickly bored with metal as a material and so began to experiment with unusual materials as well as odd proportions. From here she quickly moved on to seemingly similar garments, which in her eyes were little more than a more extensive form of body jewellery. Her work inevitably plays with a certain degree of interactivity. For example, her net-like propeller necklace swings with movement or she allows the overlong sleeve of an upper garment to be extended by up to two metres. Such perceptual shifting qualities naturally qualify her work for consideration in a performative framework and in fact Broadhead collaborated with various artists in this field on the subject of the body.
For almost ten years Caroline Broadhead taught jewellery design at Central Saint Martins before retiring in 2018.
A programme of talks and other events will accompany the exhibition.
