Laura Ngyou’s passion for travel is reflected in her jewellery, which is inspired by a fascination with the miniature worlds found within the natural landscape, from exotic jungle flora to humble rock pools. The rich textural forms of her jewellery are made of multiple components which cluster and hang together to create movement and intricate, tactile details. She uses contrasting precious metals and naturally formed gemstones with sumptuous, other-worldly qualities. Ngyou’s practice is experimental and often process-led. Interested in the ambiguity of form, each piece is an abstract composition which quietly provokes the observer to look more closely, inviting reflections on her journey and the natural curiosities which have inspired her.
Ngyou is inspired by the forms, textures and patterns found in an environment or landscape. When making a piece of jewellery, the final form of the piece usually springs from experimentation involving the melting, hammering and manipulation of metal, until she reaches a point where certain forms or textures are created that evoke a memory or feeling, for example of a rock formation, seed pod or plant growth pattern. She has a longstanding preoccupation with the sea and marine life, stemming from childhood beach trips and a marine conservation project that involved 3 months of scuba diving amongst the exquisite fish and coral of Fiji.
A new piece often is also often inspired by the unusual shape or colour of a gemstone, some of which she likes to use in their uncut crystalline form. She is drawn to ambiguous form, hardly ever working from real life and instead mostly from memory and imagination. This memory could be an amalgamation of many different natural objects she has observed, be it plant, fungi, coral or rock
