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Canberra Glassworks are working with the glass and design community to bring a little bit of the glass family to your lockdown.

As part of the Glassworks’ lockdown series of online chats with our studio and hiring artists, we would like to open the zoom doors to everyone for our remainder of the year.

These casual creative “chats” lead by our weekly stars are an opportunity to share  their practice and intentions during and after lockdown, as well as answer any questions.

So put your Deliveroo order in, keep those indoor pants on and join the fortnightly chat!

Ngaio Fitzpatrick’s multi-disciplinary arts practice encompasses site specific installations, performance, video and collaborative experimental music interactions in real time. With a background in environmentally sustainable architecture and building informing her practice, she is particularly interested in ways in which art can be used to draw attention to the human disconnection from Earth within the context of climate change and how we might heal that relationship.

Following a career in the environmental building sector, Ngaio completed an Honours Degree in Visual Arts, has exhibited in several states and internationally. She is also the Visiting Fellow with the ANU Climate Change Institute and recipient of a 2018 Australia Awards Endeavour Fellowship in Berlin and a 2016 ANU Vice Chancellors College of the Arts Fellowship.

Rebecca Colvin is a social scientist and senior lecturer with the Resources, Environment & Development Group at the ANU Crawford School of Public policy. She has a PhD in Environment Management at the University of Queensland.

Image: Ngaio Fitzpatrick, Requiem for a Reef, 2020, recycled glass. Courtesy of the artist, ACT Science Week and Canberra Glassworks.

Patricia Piccinini is an Australian artist who explores the frontiers of science and technology through her sculptures, photographs, video and installation. Patricia was Australia’s representative at the 2003 Venice Biennale and is best known for her mutant life-like creatures rendered in silicone and hair.

Patricia has spent March as Artist in Resident at Canberra Glassworks, and will be discussing her new work as she explores glass.

Image: Patricia Piccinini with new work. Courtesy of Canberra Glassworks.

Madisyn Zabel discusses new work made during her Thomas Foundation Artist in Residency.

Madisyn Zabel is a Canberra-based artist who investigates the growing dialogue between craft and digital technology. Using glass and mixed media, she realises the dynamic relationships between three-dimensional objects and their two-dimensional interpretations.

During this residency Madisyn will be creating an installation for Future Proof, an upcoming Glassworks exhibition. This installation will build on her cast glass skills as we as developing her practice into a new area of neon.

Madisyn has a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Glass) (Hons) (2015) from the Australian National University School of Art & Design, Canberra. Her work has been shown internationally, including the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou; Berlin Glas e.V and the Corning Museum of Glass, New York.

Image: Madisyn Zabel, Illuminate III 2020, cast glass. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Join artists Jessica Murtagh and Robert Schwartz as they discuss new work made during their Thomas Foundation Artist in Residencies.

Jessica Murtagh and Robert Schwartz were selected as this year’s Thomas Foundation Artist in Residence. Jessica creates blown vessels that are both functional and sculptural, her
narrative work is pre­dominantly in cameo style which utilises engraving and sandblasting techniques to create imagery on glass. Combining Robert’s passion for glass blowing with this approach to systems in nature, he will be continuing to
create works that merge the materiality of glass with the
structure of soap bubbles.

Image: Image: Robert Schwartz, Structural Void 2018, Blown and Cast Glass. Photo: Adam McGrath, courtesy of Canberra Glassworks

Based on the south coast of New South Wales, artist Simon Maberley investigates contrasting themes such as technology and climate, industry and nature and human and animal. Join us to hear him speak about his highly narrative artworks which critique the way contemporary culture engages and deals with challenges.

Join Artist in Residence Megan Cope and Graduates in Residence Mark Penney & Bermi Dreyer as they discuss their residencies and varied practice.

Megan Cope is a Quandamooka woman from North Stradbroke Island in South East Queensland. Her site-specific sculptural installations, video work and paintings explore the myths and methods of colonisation.

Mark Penney (UniSA) and Bermi Dreyer (ANU) were selected as this year’s Graduates in Residence. Penney uses flameworked and blown components to create sculptures influenced by his careful observation of funeral and memorial objects. Fractal geometry and atomic-level pattern making inform Dreyer’s cast structural pieces.

Image: Mark Penney, When it rains it pours, 2018, glass. Photo courtesy of the artist

Bethany Lick was awarded the Emerging Artist Support Scheme Residency when she graduated in Glass from ANU School of Art and Design in 2019. During her residency Bethany has continued to develop blown glass forms that reflect her fascination with the controlled environments implicit to forms within forms.

Brenden French’s career in contemporary glass spans twenty years of making, commencing first at the Sydney College of the Arts and taking him and his artwork to destinations around the world including the Jam Factory in Adelaide, Saatchi Gallery in London, William Traver Gallery, Seatlle and SOFA Chicago. As recipient of the Art Group Creative Fellowship in 2020, Brenden has focussed on increasing the scale of his blown and kiln formed work, exploring surface texture and colour.

Image: Brenden Scott French, work in progress, kiln form. Photo: Courtesy of Canberra Glassworks.

Peter Nilsson (Artist in Residence April & August) has had a studio glass career for over thirty years in Sweden and Australia. Inspired by Scandinavian folklore and a fascination of nature, Nilsson’s work examines the fluid boundaries between humans and nature and the fragile relationship they share. Nilsson will discuss the interplay between shape and picture in his latest work as well as techniques that involve expert recycling of discarded glass, laminated and kiln formed glass and enclosed engravings.

At the core of Kirstie Rea’s (Klaus Moje Glass Award prize winner residency) practice lies the desire to seek an understanding of connections to place. Walking in places beyond urban environments, seeking solitude and distance, Rea uses photography and writing to inform her making.

In this first Canberra Glassworks artist talk since the resumption of studio activities after COVID-19, Peter and Kirstie will share about new work made during residencies to the Glassworks in 2020.

Image: Peter Nilsson, Tulpan, blown glass. Photo: Courtesy of Canberra Glassworks.

Silvia Levenson’s work is never based on technique or technical virtuosity, but rather on how to make visible her own thoughts and sense of perplexity about the world. In making objects or designing installations, she does not begin by thinking of what she can do in practical terms, but rather what she wants to do.

Visiting Canberra Glassworks to teach a 5 day intensive workshop, Thinking in Glass, join Silvia in conversation about her practice.

Starting at 4:30pm in the Foyer

Image: Silvia Levenson, Still Life, cast glass and found object. Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Penny Byrne is an artist who utilises a variety of mediums to create sculptural works that at times elicit visceral responses from viewers. She is concerned with the state of the world and our place in it. Her works ask us to consider where we stand and how we feel, never preaching, but rather gently guiding us to a deeper understanding of our times. She is not afraid to tackle the big issues head on, often with wry humour and wit, and always with a deeply considered and intelligent compassion. Born in Mildura in regional Australia in 1965, she now lives and works in Melbourne.

Starting at 4:30pm in the Engine Room

Image: Penny Byrne, Hurt Locker, 2015, courtesy of the artist

Artists in Residents Tony Albert and Louis Grant will discuss how the dual strength and fragility of glass as a material offers opportunities to interrogate the ability to be fractured and recreated. This is a methodology Tony Albert has applied in his large collage and assemblage works that bring together images and found objects of Aboriginal people, their cultural materials and designs. Through re-arrangement and transformation of these found images and objects, Albert successfully generates new conversations about race and power relations in Australia and across the globe. While emerging artist Louis Grant looks at the paradox of the queer self, and the expectations between the ‘performance of self’ and ‘true self’. Grant’s work strips back the performance of self to find an authentic, raw and nuanced voice.

Starting at 4:30pm in the Engine Room

Image: Tony Albert (Girramay/Yidinji/Kuku Yalanji peoples), installation image from the exhibition Visible, 2018, Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art. Courtesy of the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf

Visiting artist Kit Paulson received her BFA with concentration in glass from Alfred University in 2004 and has been working in glass continuously since then. Kit’s own specialisation is flameworking. She has taught at Craft schools and numerous other private glass studios.

Kit is visiting Canberra Glassworks from the USA to teach a 5 day Intensive and a weekend flameworking session.

Brendan Van Hek works across mediums, incorporating materials such as neon, mirror, glass, metal and furniture. Brendan considers materials, working with them for their structural and metaphoric potential. In recent years he has explored the possibilities of glass, starting with a residency he undertook at the Canberra Glassworks in 2016. Brendan will use his residency to research different glass blowing techniques to look further at the potential of form and colour.

Kate Baker was the winner of the Hindmarsh Prize 2018. As part of the prize Kate has been awarded a residency at Canberra Glassworks.
Using imagery and video with unexpected compositions of the body, Baker often starts by photographing or drawing her own children, reflecting on personal connections of instinct and unconditional love. By cropping out faces and abstracting the image she is questioning our perceptions of how we recognise the emotions held within our physicality. Baker is interested in focusing on moments of connection between the physical, psychological and emotional strata of the human environment.

Lucy brings elements of the outside environment, such as the light and colours, inside a room to enhance the space and illicit a certain emotional or physiological response. From the residency, she hope to build a more in depth understanding of how my current ideas and works can be scaled up in an effective and achievable way.

Starting at 4:30pm in the Engine Room

Join artist in residence Lucy Palmer in conversation about her practice and residency at Canberra Glassworks.

Tanya McArthur looks the contrasting and complimentary properties of glass and porcelain used in functional domestic setting. Tanya uses groupings of vessels to convey a sense of place and belonging.
“I utilised cameo glass techniques of layering, fusing and cold working on the diamond wheels followed by kiln slumping to form vessels. Bringing glass cold working methods to my wheel thrown porcelain vessels I also used the engraving wheels to cut and manipulate the porcelain surface in order for the two materials to share a common surface both visually and texturally.”

Sorcha Yelland explores the interrelationships of human and non-human nature. Currently using imagery from the great barrier reef, juxtaposed with the artists own body (or representations of such) to explore this relationship and the ways in which current and classical anthropocentric ideologies have impacted it.
“With these explorations I hope to highlight the blurred lines between where our bodies begin and ‘non-human’ nature ends, and hope challenge the need for such a radical divide.”

Starting at 4:30pm in the Engine Room

Join graduates in residence Tanya McArthur & Sorcha Yelland in conversation about their emerging practice and their residency.

G.W.Bot is a printmaker, painter, sculptor and graphic artist who has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally.  Works created for this exhibition were made at Canberra Glassworks during her 2018 residency where she explored the ideas of language, symbols and materials.

Starting at 2pm in the Gallery.

Join G.W.Bot in conversation about her ongoing practice and the making of G.W.Bot Glass Glyphs.

Image: G.W.Bot, Engraved Poem – Mountains, Clouds and Glyphs, 2019, glass, ceramics, stainless steel. Courtesy of the artist and Beaver Galleries. Photo: Brenton McGeachie

Giles Ryder is based between Thailand and Australia. Writing of Ryder’s practice, art critic Robert Nelson has suggested that the artist is “… energized by ambiguity, shifts and blurs in perception and meaning, and by the participation of others, in various forms”. During his residency at Canberra Glassworks Ryder will create a site specific installation for the Smokestack.

Fractured Galaxy
On display in Smokestack Gallery

Starting at 4:30pm in the Engine Room

Join artist in residence Giles Ryder in conversation about his practice and the making of Fractured Galaxy.

Artists Spike Deane, Peter Nilsson and Luna Ryan reveal their fascination for storytelling in contemporary studio glass. Their passion for old and new materials and techniques are used as a vehicle to explore different aspects of storytelling from the imagined to the modern-day. Together they demonstrate the strength of narrative based art practice today.

Starting at 2pm in the Gallery.

Join exhibiting artists Spike Deane, Peter Nilsson & Luna Ryan in conversation about their practice and the making of their works shown in Long held customs.

Image: Luna Ryan, The silent scream behind the broken screen (shadowplay), detail, 2019, cast glass, bronze, recycled television screen, courtesy of the artist
Photo: Adam McGrath