This piece was made for an exhibition to draw attention to the phenomenon of knife crime currently being experienced across Britain. Gordon is one of 30 international jewellery and metals artists invited to create new bodies of work by refashioning, repurposing, adapting or otherwise transforming re purposed knives, including those surrendered to UK police.

The concept of the project stems from the curators’ concern about the effect of knife crime on UK communities and how this might be mitigated by art-in-action. After witnessing the “IMAGINE - Give Peace a Chance” anti-gun crime project in the USA, they realised that a similar but more locally-nuanced approach could be successful in the UK. IMAGINE was created by Providence-based metals artist Boris Bally.

This piece is created by repurposing a weapon and re-claiming it as a tool

While researching knife crime and the carrying of knives, I became interested in the idea of knives as tools rather that weapons and whether these tools would be carried on a person. I came across an article on paper knives.
In early book printing, the pages were printed on long strips of paper and then accordion folded before being bound together. The reader then had to cut the pages open with a knife to read the printed pages. This is referenced in Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina
“out of her handbag took a paper knife and an English novel. She ran the paper knife across the glass, then pressed its smooth cold surface to her cheek”