The Canberra Glassworks’ highly anticipated group exhibition, Upending Expectations: Contemporary Glass, is now open some four years after it was first announced.
Originally slated to open in 2020, the two-year delay proved serendipitous for the exhibition, with 2022 being the International Year of Glass.
Curated by Frances Lindsay AM, former Deputy Director at the National Gallery Victoria, this exhibition explores the work of 10 contemporary glass artists using the medium in a diversity of techniques.
The exhibition features work of Canberra-based artists Mel Douglas, Harriet Schwarzrock, Rose-Mary Faulkner, Nadege Desgenetez, and Kirstie Rea, as well as artists from NSW, South Australia, and the United Kingdom.
Works include a layered hung glass panel incorporating digital prints, beautifully lit found cut-crystal glasses, a sculpture made of recycled seconds, and blown glass forms filled with neon; all of which are presented alongside one another, demonstrating the versatility and possibilities intrinsic to the medium.
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Glassworks artistic director, Aimee Frodsham, told Canberra Daily that in curating the exhibition, Lindsay wanted to consider glass as a contemporary material capable of “conceptually led conversations”.
“Frances was not interested in our normal perception of glass, which is windows and vessels and how we interact with glass every single day.” Lindsay set out to explore three main interconnected categories with Upending Expectations: the body, transformation, and place.
“We find most of the pieces cross over, which is really nice,” Frodsham said.
‘Grotesque’ work meets Rea’s expectations
Rea, one of the participating Canberra glass artists, told Canberra Daily her work, Complacent Complicity, is a departure from her typical work that simultaneously retains her essence.
Made of glass “seconds” that would have otherwise been disposed of, the form is based on the cornucopia, the horn of plenty that is used to symbolise abundance and a bountiful harvest, but it is instead depicted as empty, collapsing, and decomposing, covered in a crude black gunk.
“I am interested in presenting glass in a way it normally wouldn’t be,” she said.
The work took form conceptually at the end of the 2019-20 fires as the pandemic began, and was completed two years ago.
“I was racked with the thought of how complacent we all are,” she said. “We think we recycle, and we think we do this, but we don’t, we don’t try hard enough.
“It asks what would happen to our planet, seriously, if we don’t take a bit more care.”
Presented alone in the building’s iconic smokestack, Rea has had people describe her work as “provocative, grotesque, and uncomfortable”.
“And that’s good, that’s my intention,” she said. “It does hopefully make people a little uncomfortable and think.
“The outcome was exactly what I had in mind.”
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Rea was delighted by the way Upending Expectations has been presented, praising both Lindsay and the Glassworks.
“I think it’s always interesting seeing a group exhibition and how the works come together within it, and then how they’re curated within that space,” Rea said.
The exhibition is scheduled to tour from 2022 to 2024, supported by the Australian Council for the Arts through the Contemporary Touring Initiative.
“For us, we’re quite used to glass being a material that conveys artistic stories, but once it leaves the Glassworks and is shown at some of the other galleries, they’re the sort of galleries that don’t normally show glass,” Frodsham said.
“I think at that point it does upend people’s expectations around glass not being a vessel and not being a window, and it being a very, very contemporary material that has amazing sculptural properties.”
Upending Expectations: Contemporary Glass is on display at the Canberra Glassworks, Kingston, until 5 June; canberraglassworks.com.au
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