Squishy, soft, fleshy: these are not qualities we tend to associate with metal. Yet in the hands of Shine 2026 participant Annie Higgins, steel, copper and silver swell, crease and fold like living tissue – a ripple beneath the skin, a muscle contracting, a tendon stretched over bone.
There is nothing clinical or morbid about the Body Works Collection. Instead, Annie’s sculptures and vessels are sensuous, tactile studies of the body as material: fragments of flesh, folds and bodily contours, are tenderly drawn from years of life drawing and translated into forms that sit somewhere between anatomy and abstraction. A blacksmith, metalsmith, artist and sculptor, she works in conversation with the metal, using the hammer not simply to impose a shape but to discover what the material itself wants to become.
That relationship has taken Annie from artist blacksmithing and a residency at Birmingham School of Jewellery to a forthcoming practice-based PhD in metalsmithing. Along the way, she is challenging two kinds of rigidity at once: the idea of metal as hard, fixed and unyielding, and the familiar image of the blacksmith as little more than muscle, fire and force. In Annie’s practice, metal becomes soft, bodily and unexpectedly alive – while metalsmithing becomes a deeply considered artistic and academic language in its own right.
‘I’m fascinated by that point where body becomes material and material becomes body, and you can no longer clearly tell which is which,’ she says. ‘Metal sits very naturally in that space for me.’
‘I tend to move between describing myself as an artist, metalsmith and sculptor. I’ve trained in both blacksmithing and silversmithing, so my practice sits somewhere under that wider umbrella of metalsmithing and sculpture. I always wanted to be an artist and was constantly making things when I was little. As a teenager, I was searching for a material that could translate the shapes and images I had been drawing for years into three dimensions.
I’ve always been drawn to tactile processes. I’ve also been life drawing since I was about 16, gravitating towards materials such as charcoal and soft pastel that I could push around the page with my hands. I did a Foundation Diploma in Hereford and went to an open day for their Artist Blacksmithing degree. I spent a few hours hitting hot metal and absolutely fell in love with it. In drawings, I had been painstakingly trying to create these squishy folds and dense, bodily forms, but when you hit hot metal with a hammer, those shapes just appear.
I went on to study artist blacksmithing at Hereford College of Arts, then worked with different smiths in different countries. Later, during an artist residency at Birmingham City University’s School of Jewellery, I began exploring sheet metal. Since coming to Bishopsland Educational Trust, I’ve worked increasingly in copper and silver alongside steel. I’m fascinated by metal, hammers and the beautiful shapes that happen when those two things collide.’
‘Most people don’t get many opportunities to experience what metal feels like when it’s being worked. We all play with plasticine as children, so even if you never go into ceramics, you have some understanding of how clay behaves. Metal is much less familiar. When you forge hot metal, it enters this strange state between rigid solid and liquid. It becomes squishy, but still has resistance. It doesn’t simply compress like clay; it pushes back. There’s something muscular, meaty and almost alive about it.
The metal we encounter in everyday life tends to be rigid, regular and controlled, but I don’t think that is necessarily what the material naturally wants to do. I’m interested in what a material contributes to a form. If I made something in metal that looked exactly like one of my drawings, then in a way it may as well have stayed a drawing. Sometimes I make clay models, but the finished metal pieces never look exactly like them because clay and metal behave so differently. I like the material to have its own conversational input. I sometimes joke that metal has more interesting ideas than I do.’
Looking Beyond the Blacksmith Stereotype
‘People often have a very fixed image of blacksmithing – Vikings, horseshoes, huge men with beards – and there certainly are plenty of beards in the field. But there is so much more happening within metalsmithing than that stereotype suggests. Ceramics and textiles have been visible in galleries and popular culture for a long time, so people understand that those materials can be used in many different ways. Metal still has quite a rigid cultural image.
Blacksmithing is also less physically demanding than people often imagine. I definitely became stronger through doing it – at one point, one of my arms was visibly bigger than the other – but once the metal is hot, you don’t actually have to hit it incredibly hard. It’s much more about technique and knowing how the material is going to move.’
‘The collection I’m presenting at Shine is called Body Works. It brings together several years of exploring what happens when I approach metal through drawings of people, bodies and these sinuous, ambiguous forms. The pieces range from semi-figurative forged sculptures referencing people and bones to drinking vessels in silver.
Touch is extremely important to the work. The pieces have swollen forms, deep crevices and indentations that invite you to put your hands around them. The steel works are particularly weighty, while the drinking vessels create an even more intimate interaction because you bring them to your mouth and hold them as you drink. The collection moves across steel, copper and silver, using very different techniques while the same shapes and forms reappear throughout. I see the materials as fairly equal rather than placing one above another. What interests me is understanding how each one behaves.’
‘My work is often described as visceral, sinuous and fleshy. I’m interested in the body, but not from a morbid perspective. For me, a human being is full of life and motion, and that begins with this deep material substance. I think of the work as fragments of bodies: muscles, sensing organs, or tiny sections of a life drawing – perhaps the corner of a hand where the flesh creases against a bone.
The forms are deliberately ambiguous. They sit in the space between seeing the body as a material and seeing materials such as metal as living things with bodies of their own. Life drawing feeds directly into my work. Rather than always drawing the complete figure, I often focus on small fragments of the body, fold different forms over one another, then cut the drawings up and rearrange them. I might take several life drawings into the workshop and work from one area one day, then return to the same object with an entirely different drawing the next. The finished work becomes a collage of many different forms.
My inspiration isn’t limited to the human figure. I draw plants, stones, buildings and other objects, but often look for the same folds and bodily forms within them. A dried, curled leaf can begin to resemble a piece of anatomy. A folded piece of rhubarb can have an incredibly fleshy quality. I think because I’ve been life drawing for so long, almost anything I draw eventually starts to look like a person.’
Press-Forming Flesh Around Bone
‘My favourite piece is probably the Tendon Beaker, the largest of the silver beakers. It’s one of my newest pieces and represents the culmination of a huge amount of learning over the last year or so.
I’m still relatively new to raising and chasing because my background is primarily in blacksmithing. Over the past 18 months, support from Heritage Crafts and Bishopsland Educational Trust has allowed me to train with several brilliant silversmiths.
One of the newer processes in the collection appears in my silver brooches. I’ve been using forged steel pieces from the collection as forms and press-forming sheets of silver directly over them.
The rubber in a hydraulic press forces the silver to slump around the rigid steel form, creating a soft curve over something hard. The result can resemble a clavicle, muscle, skin or flesh folding over a joint. I like the collision between metal appearing simultaneously soft and rigid.’
‘Being selected for Shine gives me the opportunity to bring my work out into the world. I’m quite a private person, and I’ve been developing this body of work and the ideas behind it almost secretly for a while, keeping it quite close to my chest. The Goldsmiths’ Centre offers such a significant platform to finally show that work and begin building the contemporary gallery career I’m interested in pursuing.
I’m also excited simply to see all of my work together. The collection brings together several years of exploring similar ideas through very different processes, and this will be the first time I’ve shown some of the forged and raised work side by side. Blacksmithing, forging and silversmithing can exist as quite separate communities, but to me the materials and processes are far more closely related. I’m excited to put them on the same level and allow the pieces to bounce off one another. I’m also quite excited about sneaking some steel into Shine.’
‘My next step is a practice-based PhD in metalsmithing at Birmingham City University. I’ll be researching how other smiths understand their relationship with metal and its materiality, while continuing to make my own work. I’m especially interested in making visible something most people rarely experience: metal’s softness, resistance and almost squishy quality while it is being worked.
I want to connect what is happening in contemporary metalsmithing with wider conversations in art about materiality, bodies and how we understand ourselves as physical materials in the world. And, as an added bonus, I’ll eventually get to call myself a doctor of metalsmithing.’
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