Art of glass: Chihuly spectacle set to shatter expectations of the medium
The Adelaide Botanic Garden is being transformed like never before with the colourful, large-scale glass sculptures of Dale Chihuly. John Neylon looks at why Chihuly is considered one of the most important artists of the 21st century and what visitors can expect from his first major outdoor exhibition in Australia.
Over seven months from September 27, Adelaide will host a major installation of work in the Adelaide Botanic Garden by international glass art superstar Dale Chihuly.
This association of art and garden ticks a lot of boxes. The Botanic Garden is home to several glasshouses: the best-known, the 1877 Palm House, which was restored and reopened in 1996; the 1868 Victoria House, built to show off the giant Amazon waterlily and rebirthed in 2007; and the “crashed spaceship”, the 1989 Bicentennial Conservatory, the largest single-span observatory in the world.
Chihuly’s connection with the garden and the local glass art scene has many strands. Adelaide will be only the third city outside of the United States to host a Chihuly Garden Cycle exhibition, with previous exhibitions staged at London’s Kew Gardens (2005 and 2019) and Singapore’s Garden by the Bay (2021). Some may remember a smaller-scale curation of the artist’s work at JamFactory in 2000; no Chihuly exhibition has been held in Australia since that date.
A strong attractor for Chihuly and his team, and indeed for the Adelaide glass art community, are the ties that bind. 2024 marks 50 years of glass at JamFactory. In 1974, a year after the organisation was founded, the JamFactory Glass Studio was set up by its first studio head, Sam Herman. Herman, like Dale Chihuly, had been a student of Harvey Littleton, widely considered the earliest pioneer of the studio glass movement.
JamFactory has continued to supported residencies for many South Australian artists at the Pilchuck Glass School, close to Seattle, which was founded by Chihuly in 1971. Prominent South Australian artists including Clare Belfrage, Giles Bettison, Tim Edwards and Tom Moore have taught at Pilchuck.
The work of several South Australian artists with various links to the US will be shown in conjunction with Chihuly in the Botanic Garden in an exhibition titled Gathering Light at JamFactory from December through to March. Amid all the leveraging taking place between Adelaide and Pilchuck, JamFactory CEO and artistic director Brian Parkes has raised high the banner “Adelaide and Seattle – cities of glass”.
Dale Chihuly stands inside Reeds, one of his glass installations, at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2001. Photo: Robin Nowacki / AP
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Describing Dale Chihuly as a glass studio superstar risks relegating him as a stratospheric cultural celebrity with followers. Not so. This artist is uber famous, sure, but he’s rock-solid.
Chihuly paid his dues as a wannabe artist and design/sculpture and glassblowing student. He fixed on glass as his thing in the 1960s, caught the fire with a Fulbright at the Venini factory in Venice, founded the Pilchuck Glass School in 1971, and launched on the world as an inspirational teacher and artist. By the mid 1990s, he and his team were taking on major projects such as Chihuly Over Venice, a collaborative international undertaking involving glassblowers from Finland, Ireland and Mexico that culminated in the decoration of canals in Venice with organically shaped chandeliers.
Dale Chihuly, Chartreuse Hornet Polyvitro Chandelier (detail). © 2001 Chihuly Studio. Photo: Scott Mitchell Leen
Parallel to glassblowing sessions conducted in Europe, Mexico and the United States, Chihuly branched into more spectacular site-specific installation projects, many set amid plants and verdant landscapes. An international drawcard, the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum, opened in Seattle in 2012.
International recognition continues to acknowledge his significant contribution to glass-based art practice. Stephanie Stebich, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, states that “Dale Chihuly is one of the most important artists of the 21st century who has transformed glass into a multidimensional art form”. Other accolades have celebrated his ability, through the exuberance and technical experimentation of his approach, to shatter all expectations of his medium.
Chihuly comments: “My work gives people a lot of joy, and that makes me feel like I’m a really lucky guy.”
So, to Adelaide. There will be 15 works – including two new pieces – dispersed around a 2.5km circuit in the Botanic Garden. The sites, previously assessed in collaboration with an advance Chihuly team, include open lawn vistas, a sunken garden, glasshouse interiors, lakes and dense plantings.
Relating the works to an “Australian” botanic garden has meant importing and planting close to 3000 native plants to provide context for individual sculptures. Make no mistake, this will be a highly entertaining and absorbing viewing experience for a public whose previous encounter with glass art may have consisted of flower vases, ashtrays, souvenir glass animals and the like.
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Consider the X factor of glass. The reason Chihuly and thousands of glass artists around the world prefer glass to all other mediums, I suspect, is that it has a life of its own. In formative states, masses of hot glass rotating like heavy honey at the end of a pipe before being blown then manipulated into large forms is a process almost akin to alchemy.
JamFactory has a viewing platform on its site which allows students and the public to look onto glass-blowing teams at work. Check it out. It demonstrates, as no video can, how similar glass-blowing production is to performative art – like dancing. It is, as Brian Parkes reminds, “a team sport”, with everyone adopting different roles and always on the move.
This “art alive” dynamic will also kick in as viewers in the Adelaide Botanic Garden engage with very large, complex, colourful, translucent and reflective open-air works – from different viewpoints and at different times of the day. Also, different seasons, because it should be noted that these works will be in residence for seven months. And (big tick here) it’s freely accessible to any folk who care to simply walk through the gates. Again, and again. Some ticketed events are on offer for those who want to extend the experience. Adelaide, the big Word of Mouth city, was designed for projects like these. No wonder the State Government, JamFactory, and cultural and tourism agencies are leveraging off it big-time.
Dale Chihuly, Float Boat (detail) at Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. © 2014 Chihuly Studio. Photo: Nathaniel Willson
Seven months will mean, for locals – “not forever”. So, relax, your Garden is not going to be ever dotted with “look at me” big things. Some may see “Chihulism” as a trans-global road show, speaking the language of a ’60s – ‘70s era when psychedelia inflected all manner of visual arts, fashion and graphic design. But a broader perspective regards this project as populist, a simply enjoyable experience which may lead to a richer understanding of art and science and the relationships between the two.
Botanic Garden director Michael Harvey, who had the advantage of living in London and regularly accessing the Chihuly exhibition at Kew Gardens, reminds that botanical gardens have always been a bit of a Janus – pleasure gardens in inception, then invested with more serious tasks in the modern era, such as horticulture and, most recently, climate change and conservation research. He sees the Chihuly project as a kind of “third way” in which creative play is a catalyst for engagement.
Adelaide has had a problematic recent history accommodating large-scale and colourful public works. The Hajek Plaza, for example, divided the community when installed next to the Festival Centre. It was considered at odds with its surrounds and, more particularly, “parachuted in from elsewhere”. The large public works Adelaideans have come to live with are generally monotone, things of rusted steel and stone, which invariably blend with their surroundings. Hold the colour. It might cause traffic accidents.
In this context, Chihuly in the Botanic Garden looks to be hitting a sweet spot – an extended season of grand spectacle in a neo-Baroque celebration of colour, form, light and nature.
Public art, and particularly glass art, on a grand scale is a very expensive exercise. But this project suggests there may be a way to use seasonal art events involving objects with broad public appeal to interrogate our built environment and our imaginative life, rather than be stuck with a lot of uninspiring “plonk” sculptures – forever.
Chihuly in the Botanic Garden will open in the Adelaide Botanic Garden on September 27 and run until April 29, 2025. Alongside the free display, there will be a ticketed exhibition exploring Chihuly’s life and work in the Bicentennial Conservatory, and the opportunity to visit the Garden after dark for “Chihuly Nights”, which will include live music. Throughout the season, JamFactory will present a series of exhibitions featuring work by Australian glass artists.
John Neylon is an experienced art critic who has been covering the Adelaide art scene since the 1980s. He is also the author of several books on South Australian artists.