Kyoko Hashimoto is a Japanese-born Australian designer working across critical design and jewellery. Concerned with environmentally sustainable practices, Hashimoto creates objects that address existential threats posed by globalised resource extraction and the particular materials that dominate urban experience: plastic, concrete and fossil fuels. As a designer using methods of place-based making, Hashimoto is interested in how we engage with materials for production and their relationship to the land.

‘Bioregional Bodies’ brings together new and recent works made from locally sourced materials found in the Sydney Basin, a bio-region characterised by the presence of sandstone, oyster shells, and intriguingly, coal. A challenge to obtain, Hashimoto forages coal from decommissioned mines and carves it with diamond tools. Hashimoto has written about the material: "Coal is possibly the most contentious material of our time. This ancient material formed from trees that fell 300 million years ago before bacteria and fungus had evolved to decompose their lignin. Now it’s burnt to fuel infrastructure and economy at the cost of the environment and our future."

By contextualising this fossil fuel within the typology of contemporary jewellery, Hashimoto prompts an examination of coal form different vantage points—political, ecological, aesthetic and temporal—and questions the role that coal plays in our economy and environment. In revaluing local materials, Hashimoto’s jewellery questions the design, making and manufacturing paradigms of our time, as well as the ethical complexities of local versus global resources.

Banner: Kyoko Hashimoto, ‘Coal Necklace’ 2020. Coal, oxidised sterling silver. Image courtesy: the artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney

Tile: Kyoko Hashimoto, ‘Sandstone Musubi Neckpiece’ 2019. Sandstone, kangaroo skin, eucalyptus and waxed linen. Image courtesy: the artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney