Gathering Light: You’ll be blown away by these glass works
Gathering Light showcases six leading SA artists who each work in distinctive ways with hot blown glass. Developed to coincide with Chihuly in the Botanic Garden, it marks half a century of glassblowing at JamFactory and celebrates the links between the glass art communities of Adelaide and Seattle.
Wow. This exhibition packs a visual punch. Visitors enter the gallery through a facsimile kiln door, rimmed with golden heat. A series of videos swims into view. Glass is being tortured, abraded, slumped, spun and pulled.
Forget routine glass-blowing exercises. That is the intention of the curator, Brian Parkes. He’s on a mission to sell the idea that Adelaide’s contemporary glass art scene, and its lead artists, is internationally up there with the best. And he’s got an impressive line-up of Adelaide-based talent to back up his claim. All six artists have brought something distinctive to the table in an exhibiton.
Nick Mount may carry the burden of a living treasure in the context of Australian glass art, but it doesn’t seem to have put lead in his saddle bag. His touch is a light as ever. Mount is showing two works which reflect one aspect of his studio practice – bespoke, large-scale lighting works for private commissions.
Bulbous and conical forms are cradled in metal armatures, suspended above head height. There is evidence in the striation patterning of Mount’s enduring engagement with Venetian glassblowing techniques and styles. Despite the unifying, dramatic staging, these works don’t bask easily in the spotlights, but convey a nervous energy as if grumpy about their component parts being lumped together and held in check by the metal armatures. I’m thinking of a bird’s nest crammed with hungry, fledglings. This is some kind of pecking order going on.
Liam Fleming’s forms communicate a similar sense of coiled energy. Imagine a group of square aircon ducts salvaged from an industrial fire. Forms have slumped into each other or have curled under intense heat. The scene is set for implied violence and impending ruination.
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Liam Fleming, Transitory Form #30, 2024. Photo: Connor Patterson
Fleming blows forms into square moulds then introduces one unit to another in what must be a speed dating process to avoid everything ending as a slobbering tangle on the dance floor. Of course, it’s a bit more refined than that, but when the catalogue notes refer to something like “controlled demolition” it may not be far from the truth. Cold working of surfaces enables different facets to adopt different shades of tone and colour, much like a cuttlefish putting on a show. So, I’m going to think of them as Lego blocks with chromatophoric properties.
Tim Edwards’ vessels are given the infinity-pool treatment in a side gallery staging which sets each unit at around eye height with backlighting to reveal a body within a body. What are we looking at here? A simple design exercise where the outward appearance masks the essential form? Interesting – but a little boring. I prefer a more metaphysical spin which entertains the idea that all objects (including ourselves) have a twin embedded within. Maybe it’s an evil twin, or a benign soul like a guardian angel.
The artist might be thinking about the duplicity demanded by the contemporary world, to present an outer face while hanging on for grim life to the private self. But Edwards’ very calm objects with their subtle exchanges of clear and solid are quite capable of speaking for themselves.
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Tim Edwards, Coloured Wrap, 2024. Photo: Connor Patterson
Hints of arcania draw attention to a darker recess of the gallery where Kristel Britcher’s curiously strange objects hover like malevolent drones poised to strike. The artist favours assemblage methods, joining prefabricated units to make attenuated forms which at once reference ancient amphora or apothecary jars while hinting at over the horizon, spooky hybrid technologies.
Britcher is a light trapper, often employing historical glass-cutting techniques to enliven surfaces and create a sense of tension between freedom and containment. One can imagine the lozenge forms at the heart of her objects about to jump out of their skins.
Kristel Britcher, Embodied Vessel in Blue, 2024. Photo: Connor Patterson.
On the opposite side of the gallery sits a large diorama containing works by Clare Belfrage. Her forms with their sleek satin surfaces and rippling skin look like overweight gastropods, lurking in the seaweed, eyeing off their next feed. Clever staging has set these forms in a shallow extended vitrine which has been wallpapered with details of the artist’s characteristic surface patterning to create an immersive viewing experience. If you are unfamiliar with Belfrage’s technique of drawing directly onto blown glass forms with “stringers” – spaghetti-like canes of glass – then here is an excellent opportunity to get acquainted.
Clare Belfrage, Vine Tracings, 2023, Light Time, Orange on Green Speckle, 2024. Photo: Connor Patterson
Along the facing wall are a series of blue and white cameo vases. Probably Roman era, maybe 30 BCE. No, wait. The artist, Jessica Murtagh, is all contemporary era, based in Adelaide where she directs and supervises a team of specialists in the production of the large-scale blanks used for her work.
Murtagh emulates an ancient Roman method of enclosing an inner, blue glass vase with an outer, white glass skin. The outer surface, as in Murtagh’s vases, is then worked in various ways, including cutting and sandblasting, to expose the darker, inner layer. The appeal of this technique is invariably the beautiful transitions that can be achieved between dark and light, like computer-graphic drop shadows.
Spoiler alert. Those seemingly innocuous ancient Romans going about their daily affairs are citizens of today’s world – a very clever double take.
Jessica Murtagh, Friday Night Knock Offs, 2024. Photo: Connor Patterson
Gathering Light is showing at JamFactory until March 30, 2025. The exhibition has been developed in association with Chihuly in the Botanic Garden and highlights key links between Adelaide and the Pilchuck Glass School established in Seattle by Dale Chihuly in 1971.