Graduate Designer
Alesha O'Connor
My practice moves between jewellery, spatial experimentation, and material storytelling, grounded in a belief that design can act as a form of care. I explore how making can transform trauma into resilience, tenderness, and human connection, and I design with the intention of honouring people’s stories and contributing meaningfully to Aotearoa’s mental health crisis. Drawing from my own lived experience and guided by Māori principles of manaakitanga, kaitiakitanga, kotahitanga, and tikanga, I create pieces that honour the body while engaging deeply with cultural, emotional, and relational narratives.
The Exhibition
Contours of Reverent Light
Monolithic panels rotate in a sequence of subtle curvature, forming a subtle signage that gestures toward the exhibition while withholding its full interior narrative. One side of each panel is bent back, deliberately distorting incoming light and casting shifting shadows, enhancing the interplay between form and illumination. Their profiles arc inward like the protective sweep of a human ribcage, giving the architecture a quiet, living quality that shelters a central peephole at its core.
As natural light passes through the narrow apertures between these sculpted surfaces, it fragments into rhythmic bands that drift across textured walls and the floor. These converging rays gather upon the slanted memorialised table, a form influenced by the solemn geometries of the 9/11 stone memorials. Here, delicate jewellery rests amidst grains of sand and stone, inviting moments of slow reflection and tactile engagement.
The spatial composition transforms barriers into mediators, negotiating boundaries between interior and exterior, enclosure and exposure. Through the controlled diffusion of light, the materiality of the space becomes heightened, revealing the contemplative and commemorative intentions embedded within its living, breathing architecture.
The Workshop
A Sanctum of Craft, Where Hands Orchestrate Transformation
This jeweller’s workshop is conceived as a functional yet reflective space, where making and material exploration take centre stage. The layout accommodates distinct craft zones for welding, sandcasting, polishing and grinding, allowing for both precision and experimentation. Integrated wall slots hold recycled metal sheets, while rotating wooden panels above transform into shelves, offering adaptable storage for tools, materials and works in progress. Ample cabinetry beneath the worktables further supports organisation and workflow. The lighting, warm and deliberate, accentuates the tactile richness of the materials, including stone, wood and metal, emphasising the relationship between hand, craft and environment.
Transformation
The Metaphysics of Becoming
Silver chains descend into a golden hush, glimmering above shadowed sand and stone. Light drifts like fragile memory, revealing echoes of endurance, transformation, and rebirth. The space resonates with deep reverence
The Curated Jewellery Collection
Silver Solace
I am proud to present my curated jewellery collection Silver Solace, which is made up of four artefacts titled The Radial, The Temporal, The Spinal and The Carotid. Each piece is designed to rest upon the most vulnerable parts of the body, the pulse points and nerves, where we feel most human and alive. By placing adornments on these sites, the narrative is expressed directly through the body, allowing the material to echo the rhythms of the wearer’s pulse and creating the illusion that each piece is alive in connection with them.
Each work was meticulously shaped to align with my anatomical contours, informed by 3D scans of my collarbone, hand, arm, spine and face. Larger areas of my body, such as the collarbone, had to be scanned in separate parts which I later reconstructed and merged together. This process of digitally “Frankensteining” my own anatomy became a metaphor for beginning to mend myself, piece by piece, through the act of creation. These forms became anatomical landscapes onto which I projected my concept drawings inspired by the consuming movement of fire. The designs were realised through metal cutting, forging, welding and sandcasting using recycled metals, then polished to reveal their luminous surfaces as relics of resilience forged from destruction.
Silver Solace explores the potential of jewellery to replicate the physical and emotional comfort of human embrace. These artefacts are conceived to soothe rather than numb, offering gentle and grounding sensations for individuals navigating grief, trauma or addiction. When worn, the cool silver calms the body. When I placed it on my own skin, it brought a profound sense of relief. It adjusted to my body temperature throughout the day, responding as though it were alive. The sensation was grounding and nurturing, as if I were being held by something strong, resilient and familiar.
This project reimagines jewellery as modern armour that is both protective and tender. It introduces an embodied tech aesthetic in which adornment transcends ornamentation to become an extension of the self, transforming emotion and experience into tangible form. Silver Solace demonstrates how we can positively augment ourselves as a form of personal expression, celebrating vulnerability and resilience as core aspects of the human condition. It points toward a new frontier in design where technology, craft and the body merge to foster empathy, connection and self-understanding.
For Silver Solace to be recognised at the Best Awards, would not only honour the craftsmanship and emotional depth of this work but also mark an important step toward the broader recognition of embodied, emotionally intelligent design within the contemporary design industry.
