Distorted Trajectories

DISTORTED TRAJECTORIES 

MARCEL HOOGSTAD HAY | MADELINE PROWD 

Craft ACT Craft + Design Centre 

6 February - 21 March 2020

Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre is supported by the 

ACT Government, the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy – 

an initiative of the Australian State and Territory Governments, 

and the Australia Council for the Arts – the 

Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory 

body. 

CRAFT ACT CRAFT + DESIGN CENTRE 

Tues–Fri 10am–5pm 

Saturdays 12–4pm 

Level 1, North Building, 180 London 

Circuit, 

Canberra ACT Australia 

+61 2 6262 9333 

www.craftact.org.au 

Cover: Madeline Prowd, Intersect (detail), 2019 

blown glass, cane. Photo: Pippy Mount

Distorted Trajectories 

new works in glass by Marcel Hoogstad Hay and Madeline Prowd 

Using traditional Venetian cane and murrine techniques, Madeline Prowd and Marcel 

Hoogstad Hay have created a compelling series of new works that explore similar 

themes from alternate perspectives. Both artists have utilised the unique qualities 

of blown glass to address the idea of distortion – of space, time, light and pattern. 

Prowd’s textural vessels exploit the materiality of transparent glass to warp and 

distort linear patterns, while Hoogstad Hay’s wall pieces reference astrophysical 

phenomena and illustrate the quantum nature of the universe. 

Marcel Hoogstad Hay is an Australian emerging artist and designer working primarily 

with blownglass. He received his Bachelor of Visual Arts in 2012 from the Glass 

Workshop at the ANU School of Art in Canberra and in 2014 completed the twoyear 

Associate Training Program at Jam FactoryContemporary Craft and Design in 

Adelaide. 

Madeline Prowd is an early career glass artist, currently working out of Adelaide, 

Australia.Studying under Richard Whiteley, Nadege Desgenetez and Brian Corr, she 

received a Bachelor ofVisual Arts from the Australian National University in 2009. 

Madeline then relocated to Adelaideto undertake the two-year Associate Training 

Program in the Glass Studio at JamFactory. 

Distorted Trajectories exhibition has been supported by Arts South Australia. 

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Above: 

Distorted Trajectories opening night 

Photo: 5 Foot Photography

Distorted Trajectories: Marcel Hoogstad Hay and 

Madeline Prowd 

catalogue essay: Gordon bull & deborah clark 

In 1291, early in the reign of Doge 

Pietro Gradenigo, the Venetian 

republic decided to isolate all glass 

production on Murano, a kilometre 

and a half or so over the lagoon from 

the main settlement of the city. This 

served to both protect the city from 

the threat of fire and protect the 

secrets of Venetian glass making. 

Glassmakers required official approval 

to leave Murano and leaving without 

approval was punishable by death. 

For the hard-headed Venetians the 

threat to execute glassmakers kept 

their secrets commercial-in-confidence 

for several centuries. Perhaps more 

powerfully, beyond protecting 

Venetian intellectual property, 

this secrecy made Venetian glass 

mysterious. No-one else knew how to 

make such extraordinary things, and 

it was impossible to divine how they 

might have been made by looking at 

the objects themselves. Venetian glass 

inspired wonder and awe. Madeline 

Prowd’s and Marcel Hoogstad Hay’s 

works inherit a great deal of this rich 

history: most contemporary viewers 

stand in much the same relation to 

their works as those outsiders did to 

historical Venetian glass. How is it that 

these things are made? It may as well 

be magic. 

Traditional Venetian cane techniques 

are capable of producing precise lines 

and patterns that are woven into the 

hot glass itself, so that the lines are in 

the body, not just on the surface. And 

the body of the object may be made 

of several surfaces layered one upon 

the next, creating patterns in three 

dimensions. The lines and patterns are 

made in liquid glass and sit magically 

within its body. 

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In his excellent book Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass, 1250-1550, 

Paul Hills points to the waters of the lagoon and canals of Venice as a fundamental 

point of reference for historical Venetian glass (and other practices): waters always 

shifting, sometimes transparent, admitting light, sometimes opaque, reflecting 

light; waters reflecting light that shimmers on buildings, making them appear to 

move and so dissolve solid stone; waters moving in rhythmic waves, like light itself. 

Bodies constantly sway in Venice, things are in flux, and Venetian art and craft was 

embedded in this swaying flux. These are fundamental physical forces of nature 

and conditions of perception. In the analyses of fluid dynamics they also carry 

mathematical principles that can be graphed, mapped or drawn in patterns. 

These are the properties that Marcel and Madeline employ in pursuing their own 

explorations of material, form and ideas, harnessing traditional Venetian cane 

techniques that carry their needs so perfectly: for Madeline an engagement with 

nature and landscape, for Marcel considerations of astrophysics and contemporary 

visualisations of space, which lead them to produce layered patterns, simultaneously 

ambiguous and precise, that animate seductive objects and conjure and encourage 

us to contemplate fundamental forces and movements that would otherwise be 

invisible. 

Gordon Bull 

Visiting Fellow, Centre for Art History 

and Art Theory at ANU, School of Art 

Deborah Clark 

Art Historian and independent curator, 

writer and editor

Above: 



Above: 

Madeline Prowd and Marcel Hoogstad Hay 

Photo: 5 Foot Photography 

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Above: 



Above: 

Intersect: 006 (detail), 2019 

blown glass, cane 

Photo: Pippy Mount 

Right: 

Intersect: 007, Shift: 017, 005, 018, 019, 020, 

Bend: 012, Shift: 008, blown glass, cane 

Photo: Pippy Mount

Artist Statement 

MADELINE PROWD 

Long fascinated by the technical 

aspects of pattern making in glass, 

and the extensive possibilities of 

cane work, I am presenting a body of 

new works exploring the intriguing 

manipulations of light and optics, 

texture and pattern. 

This new work showcases my recent 

departure from recreating literal 

representations of patterns in nature 

to instead focusing on pattern itself as 

the subject of my investigations. 

Exploiting the unique optical qualities 

of the material, I aim to display an 

absorbing landscape of tactile pattern. 

Utilizing the bold contrast of white 

line-work over black, with the addition 

of clear glass canes and murrini to 

bend light and perception of the 

underlying pattern. Elevating pattern 

from merely a decorative afterthought 

to the integral reason for making. 

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Above: 

Shift: 012 + Shift: 013 (detail), 2019 


Photo: Pippy Mount

Right: 

Shift 016 (detail), 2019 

blown glass, cane + murrini 


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Above: 

Shift: 016, 2019, 2019 


Photo: Pippy Mount

Above 

Shift: 012, 013, Intersect: 006, Shift: 014, 015 

2019, blown glass, cane + murrini 


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Above: 

Perceptual Dissonance, 2019 

blown and Slumped Glass 

Photo: Michael Haines 

Right: 

Eternalism (detail), 2019 

blown glass 

Photo: Michael Haines

Artist Statement 

MARCEL HOOGSTAD HAY 

I am interested in ideas that appear in 

astrophysics and quantum mechanics 

and my work addresses the ideas 

of spatial and temporal relativity, 

perceptions of space-time and our 

trajectories through it. Images of 

astronomical phenomena, in the 

form of deep space photographs 

and computer-generated diagrams, 

have influenced my work. These 

sophisticated visualizations of space 

have prompted me to explore the 

‘aesthetic of the mapped cosmos’. 

Observing the way light and space are 

affected during phenomena such as 

black holes and gravitational lenses has 

led me to consider how images and 

patterns can form or distort around 

focal points. 

Within my practice I use traditional 

Venetian cane techniques to create 

complex patterns and optical effects 

in glass. In this work I draw parallels 

between lines of cane and the lines 

physicists and astronomers use to 

illustrate gravitational and magnetic 

force fields. I also reference diagrams 

that address the quantum nature of 

our universe and have created objects 

that question our preconceived notions 

of time as linear and singular. This 

body of work manifests the physical 

and temporal forces that exist in the 

universe – the invisible forces that 

bend, distort, and ripple through the 

gravitational field. 

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Above: 

Oculus II, 2018, blown glass. 

Photo: Courtesy of the artist

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Above: 

Marcel Hoogstad Hay with Arc II 


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List of works 

1 Madeline Prowd 

Shift: 016, 2019 


$3,200 


Intersect: 006, 2019 


$1,800 


Shift: 011, 2019 


$2,700 


Shift: 014, 2019 


$1,900 


Shift: 010, 2019 


$3,000 


Shift: 015, 2019 


$2,500 


Shift: 012, 2019 


$2,600 


Bend: 010, 2019 


$1,300 


Shift: 013, 2019 


$1,600 


Bend: 003, 2018 


$1,100 

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List of works 


Bend: 011, 2019 


$1,150 


Shift: 005, 2018 


$1,500 


Bend: 009, 2018 


$1,150 


Shift: 018, 2019 


$1,250 


Bend: 013, 2019 


$1,400 


Shift: 019, 2019 


$2,100 


Intersect: 007, 2019 


$950 


Shift: 020, 2019 


$950 


Shift: 017, 2019 


$950 


Bend: 012, 2019 


$950 

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List of works 


Shift: 008, 2018 


$1,400 

26 Marcel Hoogstad Hay 

Superposition II, 2019 

blown and kiln formed glass 

$3,400 


Eternalism, 2019 

blown glass 

$2,300 


Extended Present, 2019 

blown glass 

$3,600 


Nudge II, 2019 


$3,200 


Gravitational Field, 2019 

blown glass 

$3,100 


Laminar Flow, 2019 


$3,200 


Singularity, 2018 

blown glass 

$3,100 


Perceptual Dissonance, 2019 


$3,400 


Oculus II, 2018 

blown glass 

$3,100 

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List of works 


Arc II, 2019 

blown glass 

$4,400 


Glome, 2019 


$4,200 


Photonics, 2019 

blown glass 

$3,200 

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Above: 

Distorted Trajectories, installation view 

Photo: 5 Foot Photography 

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Distorted Trajectories

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