Mothmade:  Made Here.

CULTURE & SOCIETY / ART

A conversation with jewellery-maker Lily Wenmoth on the meaning of place, identity, and community in art.

Mothmade is a story of local Ōtautahi jewellery-maker Lily Wenmoth, perhaps more familiar to some by her social handle. But it’s also a story of place, a story that examines identity as being vital to the creative process. One that understands art as existing not in a vacuum, but within a system informed by all that around us, both physical and cultural. It views community as both output and inspiration; by understanding how art brings people closer together and fosters networks of creativity we can see its importance as an antidote to artistic blocks and as a driver of social and political change.

Filmmakers Miller and Courtney, students from the New Zealand Broadcasting School, explained to The Canterbury Memo that the documentary was to explore the intricate nexus of art, community, and identity in which Wenmoth’s work operates and the social value it offers. 

Through a series of interviews, field studies, and the close following of the creation of a piece from start to finish, Mothmade shows, and doesn’t outright tell the viewer the process behind Wenmoth’s work from its inception to its fruition. In an era underscored by a damaged relationship between people and environment, the latent impacts of coloniality, and a stronger sense than ever for communities to come together, Wenmoth reflects on what it means to be a creative in modern Ōtautahi-Christchurch. 

Through deep and frank discussion about what (and where) makes a piece special we gain a small glimpse into an entire world of careful making. It’s an invitation to consider not just the object, but the stories, spaces, and histories embedded within it.

Jewellery is not a neutral art form. It’s worn at weddings and funerals, graduations and breakups. It’s gifted, inherited, stolen, pawned. It carries weight, literally, yes, but also emotionally, historically, and economically. For Ōtautahi artist Lily Wenmoth, it is a language. One that speaks of place, of politics, and of belonging.

“Ko Lily tōku ingoa. Nō Ōtautahi ahau. Ko Pākehā tōku iwi,” she says in the film's opening. Wenmoth introduces herself with a quiet steadiness, rooted in a place she both loves and questions. “You could characterise my inspiration of place or nature as many things,” she reflects, “a fragility at grasping at what it means to be Pākehā, from New Zealand but not indigenous, and without a genealogy of classism and cultural violence.”

The inspiration for the necklace in the documentary began with a forgotten corner of Ōtautahi. A vacant, overgrown, plot with crumbling walls covered in layers of changing graffiti, weeds pushing stubbornly through asphalt on Antigua Street. It’s not about reclaiming, mourning, or changing the space, rather, noticing it. Letting its overlooked textures shape the design, the form, the feeling. Wenmoth doesn’t force meaning onto her surroundings so much as she listens for what’s already there. 

“I love the life of this place,” she says. “It’s always empty. I’ve never seen anyone in it, but it holds so much respite in an urban environment.”

Wenmoth's method—lost wax casting—is itself a kind of translation. She begins with jeweller’s wax, cutting and shaping the material into forms that are later cast in metal, the wax literally lost in the process. What remains is a negative imprint filled with molten silver, then filed, polished, and embedded with stones. Her chains resist mechanical symmetry: links are often irregular, deliberate. The effect is one of considered imperfection, echoing the built environment she draws inspiration from.

Much of Wenmoth’s work straddles the line between private ritual and public practice. Her commissions are deeply personal: pieces made for births, deaths, transitions. But it’s in her self-directed projects that we see her philosophical grounding take shape. With a degree in philosophy and a background in community organising, she’s always asking: what does it mean to make something beautiful inside a broken world?

“There’s a lot of thinking that goes into making art,” she says, “not necessarily into the technical process, but where you fit in as a person in society.”

Wenmoth isn’t shy about her politics, though she avoids simple labels and catch-cries. Her involvement in organising Art for Palestine, a series of charity events that raised over $30,000 and brought together more than a hundred local artists, cemented her reputation as a unifying force in the Christchurch art scene. “I would describe my place in my community as being 'The political jeweller’” she says, amused. “I didn’t think of it that way. I thought I was engaging with the world around me and happened to also make jewellery.”

For her, nothing is separate. The rivers that run through central Ōtautahi, the graffiti tags on the walls of her bike ride, the music of her friends, all of it ends up in the work. “There are mountains that border us, there’s the ocean just over the Port Hills,” she says. “That beauty is in my jewellery.”

It’s not just place, but people. Wenmoth speaks with palpable warmth about the community she’s found. Collaborations with illustrators, photographers, podcasters. A ring made for a musician friend to use as cover art. The influence of her sister and cousin, both artists, with whom she’s exhibited work. The arts scene in Christchurch, she insists, is underrated. “We’re all here, and we’re all doing so much.”

This isn’t sentimentality. It’s strategy. Wenmoth understands the role of visibility in art, and how aesthetics can draw people into deeper engagement. “I know that people want to look at my work. But if I can lead you from ‘look at this beautiful thing’ to ‘think about this place,’ then maybe that helps. Maybe it gets someone to care about the river.”

Social media, then, becomes both a platform and a provocation. Her posts might feature a close-up of a delicate piece, but they’re accompanied by reflections on colonial legacies, ecological grief, or the changing cityscape. “Sometimes it’s almost clickbait,” she laughs. “But I try to help people along in their journey about caring more.”

In all this, the soldering, the sanding, the late nights in the studio, what Wenmoth is really crafting is attention. Attention to the environment. To the pain and joy woven into every street. To the people, especially, who hold each other through uncertainty. “There’s an intense vulnerability in sharing your artwork,” she says. “But it’s also how people connect. How they tell you why they love something.”

For Wenmoth, jewellery is just the beginning. “I don’t want to make ring after ring with no meaning,” she says. “I’m trying to listen to the people around me. Part of that is what they want to buy but part of it is also what they want from the world.”

She pauses, smiling. “And I’m not separate from that.”

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A documentary by

Bede Miller & Amei Courtney, 2025