For an artist, there are endless approaches to choose from or to invent in the making of their work. 

The approach Manon has chosen since the beginning of her career has been to place herself in the process of making as a translator of existing objects and knowledge into the visual and material language of jewellery. Her jewellery invites us into a world of associative play underpinned by a thoughtful, consistent script.

The starting points are reinterpretations of archetypal jewellery using templates, hands and numerical systems. Another part of her toolkit consists of elementary forms and arrangements that can be found in abstract art, design and architecture, nature and science. In each group of work these tools set different parameters that define the outcome during the experimental making process. In her words: “If you make a decision about the parameter, you have to stick with it. That decision will define what something is going to look like”.

Just as conditional design, mapping, diagrams or mathematical formulas have inherent limitations, their visual and tactile appearances can be limitless. And this is where Manon’s work enters with great relevance: her practice translates systems and ways of organising which she borrows from different fields of knowledge. The interpretations of what these systems can mean to us appear playfully in the form of a jewel.

The jewels may display their architecture and source materiality similarly to how a diagram displays complex information in a compressed visual form. But these jewels are more than a functional map; due to their materiality, presentation, fluid geometry and colours, they open up and evoke associations depending on what the viewer sees in them. They are as universally readable as the archetypal jewels that form a baseline of Manon’s practice.

In the series Perles d’Artiste, we see necklaces made of clay beads, which are shaped by two, four, six and more fingers, laid out next to each other in a comparative manner. The limitations set by fingers create excitement and tension. What comes next? A bead of twenty fingers or a bead made with one finger?

The series Beads for Buildings and Bodies translates the Fibonacci sequence and other numerical systems into necklaces with colourful glass seed beads, rhythmically following the numerical rule that relates to the well-known golden ratio. The Fibonacci sequence has multiple forms of appearance, from these we see a tactile proposal with a tension between the highly decorative material and the systematic making process. Presented on the wall as 

three-dimensional drawings, they gently change their shapes when transferred to and worn on the body. How would the pieces function if they were large? Could the small object potentially be a model for something bigger?

Giant Small Shapes, the exhibition as titled by Manon, plays with the dynamics of sizes and scales while it questions how much meaning and emotional value these small objects can contain. Speaking of scale: while this text unfolds one facet of Manon’s multifaceted practice, it acknowledges the productive limits of what this A4 page long text can contain. What, then, might an A3 page text unfold? I leave those further associations to you, dear visitor.

Text by Irma Földényi