Gerd Rothmann, Karl Fritsch and Robert Baines in Returning to the Jewel is a Return from Exile2

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Forget-me-not Blue
Robert Baines 2010
The conveying of love and sacrifice through the vehicle of red has antecedents since time immemorial. Within all the substances to convey red is the enjoyment of entropy and in its ultimate state of degeneration the symbol becomes quiescent. The fullness of red remains untold. Regarding the condition of red, the following quote from Claes Oldenburg has been most influential to Robert Baines.
I have just had an insight, red is redder than green, meaner than yellow, and bloodier than black
A,AAA,AAA¿.REDEVENT is a jewellery group comprising the following series: The Intervention of Red, commencing 1994; The Entropy of Red 1995; REDLINE, commencing 1996; A Vesseled History 1997; Bloodier than Black, commencing 1998, Meaner than Yellow, commencing 2001, and Whiter than Red commencing 2004. Redder than Green at Cagnes-sur-Mer now becomes part of REDEVENT.
Use of wire to build structure in this art making has direct historic derivations, though at times this may appear quite obscure. The knowledge of ancient and historic wire particularly through 'laboratory reconstruction' has been a profound vantage point to apply in a contemporary context.
Forget-me-not Blue employs multiple combinations of wire manipulations to build form and surface. The invention of new wire systems and linear network placings are a strategy to capture space. In this ring the jewellery is a seeming dismantling of historic formalism, and the application of colour and paint in an almost graffiti approach further extends this.
Forget-me-not Blue is a departure from REDEVENT. It is a political statement based on the John Williamson song Hey True Blue 1986 where there is a call or lamentation over a changed Australia principally due to the impact of multi culturalism and the demise of an earlier cultural identity.