The Chandelier of Lost Earrings, a mass participation artwork, gathers together the earrings left after its pair is lost. This is a sculpture created out of the gifts of earrings: individual stories integrated into one inclusive beautiful piece.
This project has emerged from our long-term engagement with the staff at St Mary’s Maternity Hospital. We wish to dedicate it to them, to the mothers who have delivered at the hospital and to everyone who has cared for them.
The Chandelier of Lost Earrings is exhibiting currently in St Mary’s Hospital, Manchester. It is sited inside the Summerhouse in the women’s courtyard, and lights up the yard every afternoon during these dark winter days. Helen Kitchen of Lime Arts, Manchester, took these pictures of the opening there. Staff and earring contributors whose stories connected to the hospital and the maternity ward particularly came to see it and find their earrings amongst the 3,000!
We will be launching the next phase of the Chandelier project in March from Federation House which is one of Castlefield Gallery’s New Art Spaces, and then from April 1st the Chandelier will be exhibited at Towneley Hall, Burnley. We are delighted to be exhibiting at these two venues and are planning some exciting engagement activities that will be the start of our next large artwork.
If you would like to follow the progress of this project, you can ‘like’ the Chandelier Facebook page.
We hope to see some of you at Federation House or Towneley Hall in 2014.
The support for the project has been fantastic:
- Guinness World Records has asked us to create a brand new record – World’s Largest Sculpture Made of Earrings;
- Private supporters have donated over £1,000;
We have become custodians of these treasures; it is now our duty to create the Chandelier!
Here are some of the many messages from people describing their feelings about being involved in this project:
“It’s like I can be part of a sculpture” Hazel
“….the earrings are just beautiful and at last, they have found a way to continue displaying and sharing their beauty, even though each has lost a partner!” Pamela
“….it is a diamante earring that I used to wear in my more flamboyant days, post-punk …. and it would be lovely if you could include it in your sculpture where my daughter was born.” Dominic
“ I gave birth at St. Mary’s … one of the earrings belonged to my mother, it is over 40 years old”
* The Summer House is a sculpture that we were commissioned to create for the courtyard at St Mary’s maternity unit in 2009. It is a large glass ‘house’ with magical drawings screen printed onto the surface. Over the last year we have put a number of temporary installations inside the Summer House; this is what started up our particular working relationship with the staff there.