Luke Towne

I see the qualities of gemstones in the bare face of a limestone outcrop. It is mysterious, mute, yet contains vast histories; it is evidence of passing time, upheavals and metamorphoses. Stone is animate and I carve it into a range of forms; some gestural, blurring together the structures of tools, bones, bodies and implements. Others are pictorial, using image and icon to connect the wearer to a site or material. A neckpiece may tell of a once burn- ing fire in a hearth or a passenger traversing a shadowed landscape. Some carvings collide with surgical steel chains, ashes from animal remains, leather and recon- structed stone. The fossil record is confused. The lithic and the modern are linked. I do not reject the digital age. I am interested in the collision of lifecycles. The impact between expansive geologic time and the momentary hu- man timescale is evidence of bodies and landscapes in constant reciprocity. Through my jewellery, I try to witness our matter in sync with the lithic, coalescing into a new form.