Christian Hall
Christian Hall
Christian Hall is a designer and maker based in Adelaide. As a maker Christian took this opportunity to transform the journal into a wearable object considering the concentric reality of the times.
We asked Christian three questions about his experience of isolation, completing this journal and his hope for the future. These are his responses:
Describe the experience of the period of isolation for you.
My experience of the pandemic has been one of change occurring around me rather than to me. But also, one that has afforded me time. Time to reflect, time to consolidate and time to return to new beginnings. While the pandemic has halted some plans for travel internationally it has also inhibited my usual domestic movement. Keeping me at a physical distance from my mother, who some time prior to our global situation was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Hence my response to the journal and pandemic considers individual isolation as a concentric reality for all. One which, ironically unites us and, at a personal level has seen me reunite with my mum.
What does your book represent and how did you approach the challenge?
While not mapping my thoughts through time, the journal is a reflection on the changing shape of things in the time of COVID-19. On the way time in isolation both expands and contracts, the way a moment of quiet reflection of an individual can draw one close to not only one’s own experience but that of the many. How moving in is also and always a moving out – simply a movement through. I have attached a cheeky string, shifting the journal back to the surface of the body, pendulum like, wearable and part of social life again. It just seemed the right thing to do.
What do you hope will change in Australia as a result of the pandemic?
I hope the pandemic leaves us with a renewed sense of the social. That one; the social is not just human, and two; that human social life – connection – is a precious thing. As short-lived terrestrial beings it is indeed one of the most precious things we have. Isn’t it?
Christian Hall is an Adelaide designer and maker working at the border of art and design, whose practice spans jewellery, furniture, sculpture and everyday objects.
Christian wants objects to capture a sense of delight in people and believes a thing can do this in very pure and simple ways. Through its physicality, texture, weight, spatial relationship, form and function, or via a covert narrative that can be referred to in its physical presence and yet remain elusive.
Christian originally trained in object and jewellery design at Sydney College of the Arts in the 1990's and in 2003 was awarded a Master of Visual Arts from the University of Sydney. Christian has contributed to design through teaching, consultation and most recently as the former Creative Director of the Jewellery & Metal Studio, JamFactory, Adelaide, South Australia, a position held from 2009-2018. Christian produce bespoke works for clients, new works for exhibition and continued production items for retail.
View Christian Hall's journal here:
Image: Christian Hall, Design/Isolate Journal (detail), 2020.