An Objectspace summer window installation by Portugese jeweller Leonor Hipólito, Apparatus comprises a range of works reproduced after medical tools and fashioned out of tree trunks and branches. Delicately handmade, allowing the wood grain and shape to subtly influence the final form, these 'tools' serve as reminders of our relationship to the natural world.

In writing about these works, Hipólito proposes "the idea of cooperation between the human knowledge, intelligence and creativity, and the natural world ... Apparatus weaves a thread between the thought and the action. Like a conscious gesture it leads to reflect upon a series of pertinent questions relating to global environmental relation."

Apparatus embodies a very timely appeal espousing both environmental and artistic concerns. Hipólito quotes conceptual artist Josef Beuys, who said: "For a certain period of time, we still have the possibility of making free decisions, the decision of taking a path that is different from the path we took in the past. We still can decide if we want to align our intelligence with nature."

--

Leonor Hipólito is a contemporary jeweller based in Lisbon, Portugal. A graduate in Jewelry at the Academy Gerrit Rietveld (Amsterdam) in 1999 and winner of the Gerrit Rietveld Prize, she exhibits internationally and has featured in a number of symposiums and triennials.