Artist statement: A major shift in how I create my glass art occurred during Melbourne’s lockdown and is ongoing. I was no longer content to follow the recipe to create beautiful things. I could make pretty flowers, but I needed to do something more. I wanted to create without a recipe, or at least develop a recipe of my own. I became excited about working with glass powders and experimenting, with forming patterns of subtlety and mystery within a piece. I want to make pieces that have a complexity about them. Something that draws the observer in, to take a deeper look, to take a journey of exploration, and examine the patterns, the depth, and wisps of colour within the layers of glass. The more they look, hopefully, the more they see. Is there a reflection? Does the piece look different in the changing light? When I am creating my latest pieces, I enter a flow state - I am fully immersed in the process. There are moments of great joy, excitement, surprise and very little frustration, because I have allowed myself this time of experimentation, this time of play. There are no failures. There are discoveries, some of which admittedly may look like rubbish, but that’s okay. I have learnt something.
7cm x 39cm diameter
Bullseye glass, powders, multiple firings, and layers.
Image: Loren Mitchell
7cm x 39cm diameter
Bullseye glass, powders, multiple firings, and layers.
Image: Loren Mitchell
8cm x 30cm diameter
Bullseye Glass, powders, frit. Multiple layers and firings. Metal stand by Murray Bean.
Image: Loren Mitchell
18 x 40 x 18cm
Bullseye glass, powders, frit. Glass fusing with lampworked elements. Cold working. Metalwork by Murray Bean.
Image: Tracy Andrews
e: jordan.benson.artist@gmail.com
i: @jordanb_art
Artist statement: 'Nanginator' Is a system 96 glass fused, reusche painted and sand blasted glass leadlight depicting a cream charger on a table at a party. It was created with the intention to depict a common scene at house parties where people inhale nitrous oxide to achieve a short high, a scene that is relatable to some house party goers in their late teens and early twenties. The piece also challenges the content and processes of traditional leadlighting whilst also bringing a contemporary and subjective subject matter to the craft.
57.5 x 75 x 1cm
Art glass, System 96, glass powders, Reusche glass paint, sandblasting and leadlighting.
Image: Jordan Benson
e: madeline.cardone27@gmail.com
Artist statement: This body of work is the culmination of my honours research, which engages with architectural phenomenology and notions of bodily encounter and the senses, demonstrated in black, glass objects as creative explorations of shadow, volume and void. The work embodies a personal experience of architectural space, emphasised by the material properties of glass. The folding, bending, crumpling action of the sheet of glass is important for the embodied reading of the objects and connecting the action of the body. The work demonstrates an ‘undoing’ of many of the conventions of control and refinement in kiln formed glass that I used to employ. I instead allow the sheet glass to be autonomous in its response to the space in which it is being formed, embracing the material outcomes as objects of uncertainty. This exchange of control for uncertainty represents a return to the wonder, reveal, discovery and dis-attachment I first experienced with the material, and revaluation in the knowledge and expectations of glass and its forming processes.
22 x 25 x 9cm
Kiln formed glass
Image: Brenton McGeachie
13 x 13.5 x 5cm
Kiln formed glass
Image: Brenton McGeachie
14 x 13.5 x 5cm
Kiln formed glass
Image: Brenton McGeachie
e: brontecormicanjones@outlook.com
Artist statement: Bronte Cormican-Jones is an emerging contemporary visual artist and writer living and working in Sydney on the traditional lands of the Garrigal and Darramuragal people. She completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (majoring in Sculpture and English) at the University of Sydney’s Sydney College of the Arts in 2021 and is currently undertaking Honours in Visual Arts at the Sydney College of the Arts. In her visual arts practice, Cormican-Jones often explores the field of spatial practice through her sculptural works, installation, performance and documented works. She is drawn to glass and the industrial materials of steel, bricks and timber, and is interested in the way that these materials are used in architecture and the infrastructure of the world around us. With these interests as a foundation, Cormican-Jones understands glass as a material that frames our perception of and interaction with space: a transparent membrane from which windows, doors and (in contemporary architecture) walls are constructed. Cormican-Jones is particularly drawn to the ways in which glass can both hold and reflect light, with her current body of work exploring the way that we interact with our reflections in panes of glass.
20 x 27 x 4cm
Kiln-formed sandblasted float glass with pigment.
Image: Isabelle Virrey
30 x 30 x 4.5cm
Kiln-formed sandblasted float glass with pigment.
Image: Heilam Choy
160 x 135 x 80cm
Hand-lapped float glass, timber.
Image: Remi Siciliano
40 x 40 x 0.3 cm
Kiln-formed, hand-silvered float glass.
Image: Bronte Cormican-Jones
Artist statement: ‘SHROUD’ (2020) takes the form of a mask to be worn strictly by the artist and incorporates the form of my own face within the internal surface of its design. The external visage supplanted over my own adopts the form of a furious animalistic figure – something inhuman and monstrous. Monsters and otherworldly forms are no stranger to my artistic practice, yet here the composition of this creature’s facial structure is a symbolic reflection of tumultuous emotions and experiences that were felt during the year of its creation. Spikes and fangs, a deeply furrowed brow, piercing eyes and forward-curved horns all acting as representations of anger, aggression, frustration, and a prickling anxiety that never truly subsides. Carved markings tracing their way down the face from the eyes reflect sorrow, pain, worry, and uncertainty. Yet above all things, this face is strong, bold – standing firm and unyielding in the face of challenge; something I seek to be.
17 x 15 x 25cm
Kiln-cast glass, copper, ribbon.
Image: Courtesy of the artist
e: baileydonovanglass@gmail.com
Artist statement: Adelaide-based emerging artist, Bailey Donovan, works predominantly in blown glass. Currently furthering his career in visual arts at JamFactory in South Australia, Bailey aims to deepen his understanding of glass and break the limits of the material. Bailey studied at the University of South Australia, as well as abroad in Venice, and at the Corning Museum of Glass, New York. By continuing to work as a production-based artist, Bailey creates colourful patterned vessels influenced by everyday textiles and sweets. Bailey has exhibited at institutions such as JamFactory and Craft ACT as well as having his work in public and private collections. Specialising in traditional Venetian patternmaking techniques of murrine and caneworking, Bailey’s work utilises these techniques with contemporary form and colour applications. Bailey is a recipient of the 2022 Carclew Fellowship.
Dimensions Variable
Blown caneworked glass
Image: Connor Patterson
Dimensions Variable
Blown caneworked glass
Image: Connor Patterson
Dimensions variable
Made in collaboration with Erin Daniell.
Blown caneworked glass with bronze lids.
Image: Michael Haines
Dimensions Variable
Blown caneworked glass
Image: Michael Haines
Artist statement: Bushfire - that sublime force of catastrophe and rebirth - has mutated into something not even the Eucalypt can survive. In ‘Pyriscence – After Fire’ two lungs of glass ― a material transformed by fire and breath ― flow together with oil of Eucalyptus globulus. These lungs of convergent plant, animal and technological origin are branching, networking and respiring in hybrid breaths. A remaking of the evolutionary past to confront the perils of the present, as seen through the prism of an imagined future in multispecies collaboration with the fire-adapted Eucalyptus. Anna May Kirk is an artist, curator and creative producer based in Sydney, Australia. Kirk is interested in the representational issue posed by the immaterial and spectral nature of Anthropogenic climate change. Through sculptural glass and sensory installations, Kirk engages the beholder’s body as a sensitive and porous instrument for encountering the magnitude of environmental change. In her research-based practice, Kirk entangles references to vast times, intensities and scales of our transforming planetary condition, often investigating past moments of climatic change throughout Earth’s history in order to speculate on the uncertain future.
240 x 60 x 120 cm
Handblown glass (produced in the hot shop and through flameworking), eucalyptus oil, latex tubing, steel, scent (Eucalyptus oils, water, smoke, lighting, soil, English Rose).
Images: Zan Wimberley and courtesy Powerhouse Museum.
e: abbi.mcd@gmail.com
w: abbimieogglass.com
i: abbi_mieog_glass
Artist statement: Abbi spent two decades working as a marine ecologist at sea, developing a deep connection to the marine environment. Her contemporary glass art draws on that science background and her experiences at sea. Abbi is currently being privately mentored by internationally renowned glass artist Narcissus Quagliata, and simultaneously undertaking masterclasses to create Painterly glass art. Her glass works are transformed through a range of kiln forming techniques which are then cut and recombined and fused numerous times to form painterly effects. Of the work presented: ‘Affinity’ is currently being exhibited as part of the Inside The Square collection at the Pepper Street Art Centre (SA). The piece is a statement about the affinity of glass and water, made entirely of clear glass on an opaque base sheet, the image is created by the changes in light intensity as it moves through the undulating clear columns. Water is also a clear medium that we visualise in the way it reflects, absorbs, and refracts the light around it. ‘Infinite Reflections’ is a memory. Living on the ocean far from shore leaves its own unique imprints of the sights, sounds, and emotions of night. The artwork is a glass table that captures the brief moments at night where the waves and wind stop, and the immensity of the ocean becomes an infinite calm reflection of the universe above. Calming and centring. ‘Currents’ captures the powerful motion of water, the unstoppable push - pull and the way all life below the waves must find a way to work with the motion. 'Esme' is a Painterly glass portrait of the artist’s daughter.
Curriculum vitae
20 x 2 x 20 cm
Kiln fused glass merging Andamanto mosaic and kiln forming techniques.
Image: Abbi Mieog Glass
37 x 30 x 37 cm
Kiln formed glass on a ceramic base.
Image: Abbi Mieog Glass
25 x 20 x 10 cm
Kiln formed glass on a wooden base.
Image: Abbi Mieog Glass
30 x 30 x 10 cm
Kiln formed glass on a wooden base. The piece incorperates glass stackers, sliders, lace, wafers and hand pulled stringers that are fused into a painterly portrait.
Image: Abbi Mieog Glass
Artist statement: Mark Penney is currently finishing a masters of design at the University of South Australia, common themes explored in his work are the unknown, the afterlife, science fiction and childhood nostalgia. Working primarily in glass as a sculpting material mark seeks to drawn interest to the medium by drawing viewers who may not be interested in traditional Venetian style glass work.
30x20x20cm
Made entirely of glass the piece is sculptural work that is made up of functional elements (3 paperweights and a vase)
Image: Mark Penney
30x20x20cm
Made entirely of glass it's a sculpture made of functional elements ( 3 paperweights and a vase)
Image: Mark Penney
30x20x20cm
Fully made in the hotshop and assembled hot this piece is a functional vessel disguised as a cyborg alien sculpture.
Image: Mark Penney
15x15x15cm
Exploding star object
Image: Mark Penney
i: @gnr_glass
Artist statement: Redman’s practice traces its point of departure within the manipulation of glass. Glass plays a crucial part, for the artist, in contemplating a future where humans create fragments of a personal reality and from this tries to develop new types of understanding of the landscape forms. Inspired by the glass techniques of Mark Pieser and Matthew Szosz, and the methods they developed to manipulate a stream of molten glass directly from a furnace. Redman was inspired by these techniques to create “IVY”, panels of glass were produced directly from the gas furnace in the vitrigraph style, then fused on a bed of silica. Made from recycled bottle glass, the heating and control of the stream to produce panels provides many challenges. Manipulating the physical properties of glass, Redman searches for the duality between the real and the perception of virtual. The digital landscape that surrounds us threatens the definition and perception of reality, within the creation of virtual art and environments, causing the disturbance that crosses over into the real. When the creation has a physicality but not a biology who questions how we experience this. Redman’s art developed from a mass production landscape leads to questions of the contemporary future of perception of the tangible. Pursuing ways of expressing tactility and luminosity “IVY” creates the opportunity for the viewer to be dazzled providing an encounter with wonder and the sublime. The forms and gestures found in it capture a fleeting, living energy and suggest a certain mystery, expressing the energy and essence of existence, a sense of life, a hovering celestial body. In a dematerialised world where all is virtual and generic, Redman's work seeks to define a new type of physical materiality and invites the mind to expand toward a new understanding.
40 x 40 x 3cm
Furnace streamed glass, fused, recycled bottle glass.
Image: G.Redman
Artist statement: The work process is usually referred to as ’cold’ or ‘fused’ glass, which is a tad misleading as kiln temp is run to approx. 700C. Once a design is completed, the structural integrity of the piece needs to be checked. Each piece must accurately overlay another. Glass in this thin format, 2 mm + 2 mm, will shrink in area as it grows to 6mm in thickness. The combination of light, pure colours and variations in contours created by various overlays bring dull black and white sketch plans to life. Seemingly with a mind of its own, the molten glass will decide exactly where it will run, bringing another challenge to a rewarding process. Hence though two pieces may start with the same basic layout, after the kiln and glass have combined, no two pieces will ever be the same.
24 x 22 x 0.6cm
Contour fused, transparent, colored glass, CO96
Image: Peter Revelman
12 x 65 x 0.6cm (2)
Contour fused, transparent , colored glass. 96 co. Clear acrylic bases
Image: Peter Revelman
30 x 66 x 0.6cm
Base 25mm Acrylic. Contour fused glass, colored & transparent, CO96
Image: Peter Revelman
6 x 36(diameter)cm
Contour, fused & slumped, transparent, colored glass, 96CO.
Image: Peter Revelman
Artist statement: Using recycled materials is an important consideration of Michelle’s work and reflects notions of human impact through consumption and waste. She uses an explorative pâte de verre method that utilises minimal moulding material to explore colour blending, texture and surface treatment methods. At the centre of Michelle’s work is a profound respect for the land we live on. She has a deep concern for the way humans inhabit the planet and the impact we are making. By treating our home as a resource rather than a life-source, she is troubled that we seem to have disconnected with the basic understanding that we are all part of an intricate system. To care for the environment that surrounds us, we are also caring for ourselves. We are inextricably linked. Using a jeweller’s vernacular and age-old chain iconography, Michelle is reflecting on how we and our actions are all connected. Glass as a material for chains introduces a gentleness to the motif. The material brings a commentary on the fragility of the way we live. When these pieces are worn they sit firmly on the shoulders, but they still remind the wearer to move mindfully. Michelle obtained a Bachelor of Fine Art, Honours at RMIT University in Melbourne in 2017 after completing an Advanced Diploma in jewellery at Melbourne Polytechnic in 2011. She has undertaken a variety of glass, metal and illustration workshops with Alicia Lomné, Peter Nilsson, Robert Baines, David Huycke and Diane Emery. She is also a qualified Horticulturalist. Her jewellery and sculptural work has been chosen for multiple Australian and International shows including in North America, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and Italy. She has travelled to Canada and Scotland for Arts residencies and won a sustainability award in 2018 for her glasswork in Venice, Italy.
0.8 x 30 x 30cm
Pâte de Verre using bottle glass
Image: Fred Kroh
0.8 x 30 x 30cm
Pâte de Verre with bottle glass, Recycled Fine Silver overlay
Image: Fred Kroh
0.5 x 40 x 40cm
Pâte de Verre with bottle glass, oxidised recycled fine silver
Image: Fred Kroh
Artist statement: Scientific glass and naturopathy informed both works. The healing essence of eucalyptus is extracted through distillation and poured into the gestural, hollow form made from laboratory test tubes. Aromatic scents are then diffused into the air, stimulating the sense of smell, connecting the mind and the body. These works promote dialogues between lampworking and Chinese calligraphy, both practices necessitate mindfulness of present, gravity and the rhythm. 'Yì 意' was recently developed during my Graduate in Residence in Canberra Glassworks mentored by Peter Minson.
165 x 120 x 20cm
Flameworked borosilicate glass, Eucalyptus cneorifolia essential oil, dyed sola wood (Aeschynomene aspera), cotton thread, reed, silicone and MDF board.
Image: Michael Haines
160 x 40 x 15cm
Flameworked borosilicate glass, Eucalyptus cneorifolia essential oil, sola wood (Aeschynomene aspera), teak，cotton thread, reed and silicone.
Image: Michael Haines
