Shortlist 2020

Pierce Healy

Pierce Healy

Based in his native Dublin, Pierce Healy completed a BA in Metals at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin in 2010 and received an MFA from Adellab Konstfack, Stockholm in 2012. He creates subversive wearable objects and jewellery in metal, often layered with intricate, heavily-worked engravings.

A skilled draughtsman, he refers to himself as a ‘human Swiss army knife’ due to the array of materials, disciplines and skills he employs. He is fascinated by the capacity of jewellery to embody human stories and facilitate storytelling, and thinks of items of jewellery as portable altars: vessels for our most intimate secrets; objects to be protected, cherished and adored. Mark-making is central to his practice, and he is interested in the scratches and dings that accumulate on the surface of his works as they are worn, protecting the wearer from bearing these marks on their own skin. Using silver and gold, each piece evolves through an open-ended experimental process that relies on a series of controlled experiments and happy accidents to produce objects that come fully-formed with their own unique histories.

Pierce Healy applied for a Golden Fleece Award in order to fund further training and research, as well as the acquisition of specialist tools – hand punches and gravers, mould-making equipment – and silver. He plans to travel to Japan to expand his professional network and study Japanese inlay metal-working techniques used in the decoration of samurai swords with master craftsman Kazuo Kashima. This is intended to inform the development of his craft practice and skills.