Essay by Angelique Ogierman for Contextualising Practice
Acknowledgement
I would like to begin by acknowledging the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations, whose unceded land I live, study and craft on. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and I recognise their longstanding connection to Country and culture. I acknowledge the various waterways that run through the land and have long sustained life, and the Traditional Custodians whose connection to the water is much deeper and richer than my own (NRG, n.d).
Prologue
‘Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.’ (Atwood 2005:43).
At the beginning of 2024, I visited my grandmother’s hometown of Yogyakarta, where my fixation with water was realised. I was looking out at the pond at our accommodation, where lily pads gently floated across the water when I suddenly wanted to be a part of the scenery. Reaching down, I swirled my fingers in the water, feeling a slick coolness permeate my skin. I pushed my hand around more until some water splashed upon the lily pad’s surface. Droplets of water beaded together and continued moving around the leaf, but they never broke and spread apart. Enthralled, I continued to play with the water. I was mesmerised by the different way it moved across my skin compared to the lily pad. At the time, I did not recognise how significant this moment would be for my art practice.
I do not like to think this was the moment I became captivated by water. I remember at five years old being so excited by some sudden rain that I stayed out of class to dance in the courtyard. However, this interaction with water and the lily pads sparked an interest in exploring materiality in my art practice. I began imagining the stories held within the natural environment surrounding me and the processes I could use in my jewellery practice to reflect them. Additionally, I began thinking about how the life cycle of metal through the jewellery industry echoes the cycles of water. I wondered whether I could learn these materialities just through observation, or whether knowledge is only transmitted through a sense of touch or movement.
This essay will begin by introducing theories surrounding the embodied knowledge developed through physically crafting and the value of materiality within a tactile medium. After exploring these concepts, the essay will follow the lifecycle of a neckpiece I created from its inception and life to its death and rebirth.
Movements and Materiality
Historian of Psychology Roger Smith (2023) defines kinaesthesia as the awareness of the body’s movement and limb positioning. Kinaesthetics is the learning process in which people absorb knowledge through movements or by touching objects. In relation to artists or craftspeople, this can be manifest in the repetitive, bodily dedication to a technique. Developing an intimate understanding of the materials within your practice is what Professor Guillemette Bolens describes as ‘a type of knowledge that expands through sensorial practice’ (2022:2). Extending further away from the body, the inherent life of the materials we use can be explored, rather than what we humans do to them.
Theories of materialism have been growing, changing, and circling for centuries, which has now morphed into a cross-disciplinary framework with numerous definitions and applications (Gamble et al. 2019). New Materialism acknowledges previous beliefs of independent material agency, however, it is more concerned with materiality within the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene, a term initially proposed by atmospheric chemists Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer (2000), describes our current geological epoch where humans have become the domineering force over the planet.
Maintaining outdated ideas of materiality within the Anthropocene creates an isolating and hierarchical perspective not just to people within our communities, but to our surrounding environment. Dr. Luci Attala (2019) theorises that this causes humans to separate themselves further from both the material and natural world, which humans often forget they are a part of. However, while discussing what can be described as material agency, anthropologist Tim Ingold suggests ‘things are active not because they are imbued with agency but because of the ways in which they are caught up in the currents of the lifeworld’(2007:1). Both Attala and Ingold believe that materials hold their own life, but this agency becomes relational to surrounding elements. This replaces the standard narrative of humans embedding meaning into materials and instead lets the materials lead the narrative.
‘Silver to me seems wet, hard, and full of aesthetic qualities. Because of its wetness and hardness, it also has a sort of softness.’ Norman, cited in Willcox (1974:34).
Figure 1: Angelique Ogierman, Rippling, 2024, sterling silver, 16cm x 1cm x 38cm.
Rippling (2024)
Rippling (2024) is a necklace that seeks to realign humans with nature, embodying this idea through water. As it lies across the chest, the central rippling silver forms shift with the body’s movement. Delicate silver chains run between the pieces and suspend them across the body, provoking even small movements to extend across the whole neckpiece. The flowing cast pieces extend towards two chains, hooking around the back of the neck, where one falls down to a lonely droplet. I wanted to extend the flow of the neckpiece all around to the clasp, where the hook and catch have the same expression as the other rippling pieces (see Figure 2). This singular droplet down the back of the piece reflects both the physical similarities of a pendulum and the more conceptual associations described by physicist Gregory L. Baker (2011) as a symbol of the inevitable cyclical movement of the universe and the passage of time. When such organic silver forms are highly polished, the metal has the quality to shine and reflect in a way that makes the material appear like liquid. This property is observed when soldering or fusing silver, during the molten state of the metal. The silver is bright and clear, fluid, as it glides across and absorbs the surrounding metal. It spreads of its own accord, only being directed by wherever it holds the most heat. This malleability contrasts with the solidity of the cold material, which is still soft enough to curve with pliers or morph when a jewellery piece is worn for a long time on the body.
Ogierman, Rippling, 2024, sterling silver, 16cm x 1cm x 38cm [back view].
Birth
My jewellery practice has always been process-driven, in which I allow my chosen materials to guide and inform the finished piece. Within Rippling (2024), I aimed to give water the ability to shape my work and embody fluidity as I crafted it. I was inspired by a demonstration of ‘water casting’ in class, where melted wax was poured into a bucket of water. The wax cooled and solidified within the water, capturing the gravitational pull of the wax as it flowed through the liquid. To transform this wax into metal, the ancient ‘lost wax casting’ method would be used. A mould would initially be made around the wax, which is then burnt out, and molten metal is poured into the negative form (Townsend 2017). As a jeweller, the forming of materials is often quite forceful: hammering, bending, rolling, and sawing. Especially when attempting to emulate natural elements, these processes feel mechanised and inorganic; they, as Tokay has described, ‘force materials into predetermined forms’ (2023:11). Although casting creates direct copies of the original form, it was in this initial state that water held and carved the wax. There was beauty in letting another natural force shape my work.
However, I wanted to slow the dropping of the wax through water to emulate similar rounded movements of water over the lily pad. To thicken the liquid, I added cornstarch to achieve a denser consistency. I then used a spoon to pour and trickle liquid wax into the mixture.
I spiralled,
swirled,
mixed,
splashed,
and dripped
the wax.
Movement was at the forefront of thought, both of the water and my body. Yet, it was an embodied act that does not seem to translate ‘verbally or pictorially’ (as Guillemette has noted of their own process 2022:3). My body started to reflect the fluid movements of the water and wax. I became surrounded by liquid; from water, to wax, to molten metal; everything felt active.
I continued this casting process until I had piles of wax. There were variations in thickness, depth, detail and smoothness. The organic wax forms revealed the inherent nature of the way water molecules move, as described by author John Archer (2008), by internally spiraling and constantly attempting to create a spherical form. I cut segments which seemed to flow similarly, laying out my pieces until a pathway between them seemed to develop. I used clear tape to hold my configurations in place and lay them against my body, seeing similarities in the organic fleshy forms. After countless variations and compositions, I chose the final pieces to be casted in sterling silver.
Growing and Connecting
After birthing all these watery forms, I wanted to extend the flow of life back into them. I continued my repetitive acts, creating tiny jump rings to hold the thin chain. Over and over again, I made these small links, no bigger than five millimetres and no wider than half a millimetre. I carefully soldered these rings to the cast silver to hold the connecting chain, which proved quite difficult due to the great contrast in mass. Over the course of days and weeks, I continued this process. I constantly stared at tiny fittings, treading the line of soldering and completely melting. Although through such a laborious process, there was an intimacy developed through interacting at such a small scale (something Ingold has noted about the relationship between makers and their materials 2007). In these intricate moments, I needed to be centered. Present. It felt as though my body was trying to bend to the watery forms that were in front of me, twisting around to determine how the placement of jump rings could continue the flow of metal.
My work has always been a way to focus my mind on another world, creating a meditative escape where I concentrate solely on my body’s movement with my tools and interactions with materials. While creating this piece, my personal life felt turbulent, with a stream of problems pushing through my comfortable routine. Yet, I found relief in my work. When I sat down to saw, solder, or file, I forced myself to focus on that moment. The technique I was using, the way I was holding my pliers, the heat emanating from the soldering block, or the smell of gas from the torch beside me. After repeating the motions of the same techniques, my mind seemed to melt into my body and my body acted as my brain (a sentiment echoed by Smith 2023).
Life
Finally, the neckpiece was complete. The last links were soldered and polished, only the night before the assessment. At last, I was able to wear my watery creation. The metal felt cool against my skin, and I could feel a heavy weight against my chest, contrasted by the slight chain dangling down my back, holding the droplet that would occasionally brush against my spine. Light reflected off the crests of the polished silver, highlighting the curves and contours embedded in the metal.
I wanted to replicate similar movements to those of the lily pad, to move the neckpiece like the beaded water. I tried expanding my chest, rotating my shoulders, hunching over and extending my arms. The neckpiece rippled and fell into hollow contours of my flesh and rose against ridges of my bones. At that moment, my body became part of the work. I was moving my body with purpose, attempting to feel what lay on my skin, as well as what was moving within myself. Artist Róisín O’Gorman shares how the intentional movement of the body like water can help understand how water physically moves and tumbles together (O’Gorman 2019). Creating an active vessel to show my neckpiece contrasts with how the body is typically just used as a mannequin to display jewellery (Willcox 1974).
Unfortunately, the life of the necklace was short-lived. When I was putting it away for assessment, I dropped it. Two chains snapped, and I watched my silver droplets spray across the studio floor.
Death
I felt then how brittle some of the chain had become and how some solder points were unstable. My desire to use such a thin and delicate chain meant that it could not support the weight of all the cast pieces. With no more time left, I just used jump rings to hold the chain together for assessment. Afterwards, I decided to take the neckpiece apart. Some segments became pendants, some rings, and the rest were melted down to use in other projects.
I believe this outcome followed the flexible nature of my practice, where the neckpiece didn’t really come to an end but was carried on and repurposed. My initial intention for this piece was to ‘focus on the fluidity of processes’ (a sentiment Attala has also articulated 2019:11), with no predetermined composition. From creation to separation, I let the materials guide the way. I let water shape my materials, and in turn, influence how I moved my own body to work along its current. Similar to cycles of water, my silver morphed into different forms. Rippling (2024) dispersed.
Metamorphosis, Returning to Liquid
In the end, most pieces of Rippling (2024) returned to liquid, melted down and cast into other forms. Yet afterwards, I held these new forms and thought about what they had been. How I could not get those same patterns back again. Even if I tried to forge and file the silver by hand, I did not believe the exact details and subtle complexities could be recreated. The intangible sense of the pieces was held in the water, which created them.
While investigating water casting as a form to transcribe the movements of water into jewellery, my practice shifted more towards an exploration into different ways the body moves and moulds to a material while crafting. I intend to continue exploring the use of water to shape materials and as a reflective source to observe the movements of the body. In doing so, I could extend to a performance-based display of my jewellery, where there would be life in them rather than the traditional stationary exhibition. The life cycle of Rippling (2024) did not end, but it remained with me and will continue to recycle until I can no longer recall how far the metal travelled.
References
Archer J (2008) The Wisdom of Water, Inspired Living/Allen Unwin, Crows Nest.
Attala L (2019) How Water Makes Us Human: Engagements of the Materiality of Water, University of Wales Press, Cardiff.
Atwood M (2005) The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus, Canongate, New York.
Baker G (2011) Seven Tales of the Pendulum, Oxford University Press, New York.
Crutzen P & Stoermer E (2000) ‘The ‘Anthropocene’’, Global Change Newsletter, 41:17-18, accessed 1 May 2025.
Fredriksen B (2023) Crafting Relationships with Nature Through Creative Practices, Oslo Scandinavian University Press, DOI: 10.18261/9788215069197-23.
Gamble C, Hanan J and Nial T (2019) ‘WHAT IS NEW MATERIALISM?’, Angelaki: journal of the theoretical humanities, 24(6):111-134, DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2019.1684704.
Guillemette B (2022) ‘Embodied Cognition, Kinaesthetic Knowledge, and Kinesic Imagination in Literature and Visual Arts’, Frontiers in Communication, 7:1-15, DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2022.926232.
Ingold T (2007) ‘Materials Against Materiality’, Archeological Dialogues, 14(1):1-16, DOI: 10.1017/S1380203807002127.
O’Gorman R (2019) ‘Water Marks and Water Moves: Community Art and Thinking with Water’, Community Development Journal, 54(1):119-144, DOI:10.1093/cdj/bsy053.
Smith R (2023) Kinaesthesia in the Psychology, Philosophy and Culture of Human Experiences, Routledge, England, accessed 22 May 2025.
Tokay E (2023) Nature that Matters: The Potential of New Materialism for Environmental Ethics [dissertation], Fordham University, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global database.
Townsend J (2017) Cast: Art and Objects Made Using Humanity’s Most Transformational Process, Schiffer Publishing Limited, Pennsylvania.
Willcox D (1974) Body Jewellery: International Perspectives, Pitman, London.
Essay – Cyclical Movements: Exploring the Connection of Water and the Body
