Gold Winner - Fauna by Kevin Lu

Congratulations to Kevin for his win on Pre-Loved to Treasure competition 2020.

A modular necklace and ring set, conceived as a tribute to the Animal Kingdom and a commentary on Mankind’s troubled relationship with its subjects.

The main components are carved, upcycled bone of a lamb, representing the visceral nature of industrialized meat production; yet its antithesis can be found in the cord and tassel components, that conversely have been made of cruelty-free synthetic leather, even though they are nevertheless dyed in colours reminiscent of  blood veins.

A small section of the bone is coloured by needle-applied Azorubine – a synthetic substitute for traditional cochineal, a red dye that is derived from crushing up to 70,000 individual insects of select species per pound of colourant; this small sliver of red, applied on the bone, echoes the synthetic leather in its hope for a cruelty-free future of production and consumption cycles.

The silhouette of the pieces themselves is monolithic and vaguely archaic – recalling bygone eras of human civilization that had maintained better relationships with animals and nature, all bound together in wires of copper – a metal that represents Love via its association with Venus