Tempered Vines

Tempered Vines is a forged iron necklace that investigates the relationship between fire, bodily negotiation, and material transformation. The work begins with Eucalyptus citriodora Hook and continues an ongoing practice of reinterpreting Australian post-fire flora through the visual language of Chinese traditional ornamental motifs. This work involves a process of cross-cultural translation that examines how craft systems from different traditions can communicate with each other.
The eucalyptus is shown through a pattern of shapes that repeat over and over, reflecting ideas of endless renewal and cycles found in both Eastern art and ecological thinking. This patterning finds its material elevation in the craft of Chinese traditional iron painting (tiě huà), through which a flattened, graphic vocabulary is translated into forged metal, collapsing the boundary between surface ornament and bodily adornment.
The piece required over thirty hours of sustained heating, hammering, and reshaping. Throughout this process, fire operates not merely as a heating medium but as an animate force, softening metal, redirecting movement, and conditioning the body's responses. Drawing on phenomenological understandings of making, the work understands the maker's body not as an instrument of control but as a site of ongoing negotiation with material agency. Although the work reads as technically precise, its final form emerged through the accumulation of heat, resistance, time, and physical endurance.
In a final act, the piece was subjected to an intense open flame, producing an oxidised surface layer. The resulting matte black finish recalls the scorched landscape left in the wake of an Australian bushfire. It is here that the work finds its deeper resonance. In the tempering of iron, Tempered Vines embodies the resilience of eucalyptus, a species that does not merely survive fire but depends on it to regenerate.