Help Me, Help You. (2017)

Help Me, Help You (2017) is a jewellery project involving a group of participants who spoke with me about their thoughts and emotions in regards to climate change. It is my belief that climate change takes a toll on our collective psyche, and we must as a community attempt to understand this psychological factor within this vast and urgent issue. We most commonly engage with climate change through the mass media, which disseminates a sense of overwhelming doom, shame and blame.

This project aims to alleviate individuals who are experiencing negative emotions in relation to climate change and the environment, and are joined as a self-help group under the epithet Eco-Worriers. A questionnaire revealed a whirlpool of emotions from the Eco-Worriers: from fear, alienation, anger, apathy to hope, conviction, determination and love.

After choosing a natural location that means the most to them, and collecting a token from that place each Worrier received a Pill Capsule Pendant, which can be unscrewed to store something inside. Each Worrier’s pendant holds and protects a personalized object made from the token/s they collected from their location. The pendants connect and identify the Worrier’s as a group with shared concerns and anxieties about the environment. The object connects the individual to a special place, as a reminder to care for and protect the natural world.

A book was made to document the questionnaire/correspondence between myself and the worriers, and connects the group in dialogue. The book also contains photos of each location chosen by the Worriers, with a message hidden within the scenery in an attempt to give Nature a voice.

Help Me, Help You, is about reciprocity, two partners who work towards the most desirable or good fate. This project aims to highlight the relationship between our psychological health and ecological health, and to demonstrate how inseparable the two are. “Only love can change us” -Theodore Roszak