FUSE Glass Prize 2022 Catalogue

2022

Contents 

Introduction 2 

Donors 6 

Judges 8 

Glass and the pandemic: 12 

shining light through the blackness 

by Eva Czernis-Ryl 

Emerging Category Finalists 

Bronte Cormican-Jones 44 

Rose-Mary Faulkner 46 

Alexandra Hirst 48 

Bronwyn Sargeson 50 

Michelle Stewart 52 

Jianzhen Wu 54 

Established Category Finalists 

Nicholas Burridge 58 

Matthew Curtis 60 

Jess Dare 62 

Mel Douglas 64 

Liam Fleming 66 

Hannah Gason 68 

Tom Moore 70 

Jason Sims 72 

Drew Spangenberg 74 

Alex Valero 76 

Janice Vitkovsky 78 

Kathryn Wightman 80 

Credits 82

Introduction 

JamFactory is proud to present the 

2022 FUSE Glass Prize. 

In this United Nations International Year of 

Glass, JamFactory is proud to present the 

2022 FUSE Glass Prize. 

The biennial FUSE Glass Prize is a juried, 

non-acquisitive, $20,000 cash prize for 

established artists residing in Australia or 

New Zealand working in the field of glass. 

An additional prize – the David Henshall 

Emerging Artist Prize, comprising of $2,500 

cash and a professional development 

residency in JamFactory’s Glass Studio 

valued at a further $2,500, is awarded to an 

emerging glass artist. The FUSE Glass Prize 

was established in 2016 and the inaugural 

winners were Clare Belfrage (Established) 

and Alex Valero (Emerging). In 2018 the 

winners were Jessica Loughlin (Established) 

and Ursula Halpin (Emerging) and in 2020 

the winners were Cobi Cockburn (Established) 

and Madisyn Zabel (Emerging). 

Just over two years ago, entries for the 

2020 prize were being submitted at what 

was the beginning of the global COVID-19 

pandemic and the presentation of the 

subsequent exhibition of finalists and related 

event were reimagined in the digital space – 

exposing the prize to a wider international 

audience. Multiple rounds of lockdowns, 

closures and restrictions have continued to 

create challenges for many artists working 

in glass over the ensuing two years. Despite 

this the 2022 FUSE Glass Prize once again 

attracted a highly competitive field of 

applications from across Australia and 

New Zealand. 

JamFactory is enormously grateful for the 

efforts of the 2022 judging panel: Rebecca 

Evans, Justine Olsen, Aimee Frodsham, Cobi 

Cockburn and Brian Parkes who assessed 

the applications and selected the twelve 

finalists in the Established Category and six 

finalists in the Emerging Category via video 

conference, and who have come together 

face to face in Adelaide to physically 

examine the finalists’ works to select this 

year’s winners. Information about the 2022 

winners will be broadly circulated and 

available on the dedicated website 

fuseglassprize.com following a formal 

announcement on 12 May. 

The FUSE Glass Prize provides a platform 

to encourage artists working in glass to push 

themselves and their work to new limits and 

to focus significant public attention on 

the importance of glass as a medium for 

contemporary artistic expression. Australian 

and New Zealand artists have established a 

global reputation for technical innovation and 

daring creativity in glass. The high calibre 

2

Bronwyn Sargeson, Circularene (detail), 2022 

Photo: Brenton McGeachie

Drew Spangenberg, Curvilinear Ensemble (detail), 2022 

Photo: Pippy Mount 

4

and broad range of formal, technical and 

conceptual approaches represented in the 

work of the 18 finalists this year continues to 

provide strong evidence of the strength of 

the practice in our region. 

The FUSE Glass Prize is an important initiative 

for JamFactory and last year we were thrilled 

to extend the program and launch the FUSE 

Glass Artist Residency, which will be offered 

every alternative year of the Prize and aims 

to create significant opportunities for 

established, mid-career artists working in 

glass. The residency at JamFactory enables 

a selected artist to work with skilled 

assistants, take risks and experiment with 

new work using or incorporating hot 

blown glass. 

In 2020 we expanded the FUSE Glass Prize 

catalogue to include a major commissioned 

essay surveying developments in the field of 

glass art in Australia and New Zealand over 

the previous two years. The author of that 

essay was Margot Osborne, author of the 

landmark 2005 publication Australian Glass 

Today and we are confident that this biennial 

series of essays will form a valuable archive 

for students, artists, collectors and 

researchers in the field of glass. For 

2022 we are truly grateful to Powerhouse 

Museum Curator and 2020 FUSE Glass Prize 

judge, Eva Czernis-Ryl, who has consulted 

widely to write a thoughtful overview 

against the ever-present backdrop of the 

COVID-19 pandemic. 

JamFactory is a unique not-for-profit 

organisation located in the Adelaide city 

centre and at Seppeltsfield in the Barossa. 

It is recognised nationally and internationally 

as a centre for excellence in glass, ceramics, 

furniture and metal design. JamFactory’s 

Glass Studio is the longest running hot glass 

facility in Australia and one of the largest 

and best equipped studios in the Southern 

Hemisphere. Associates and staff, guided 

by current Studio Head Kristel Britcher, 

work together to design and make corporate 

awards and gifts, custom one-off 

commissions, architectural work and small 

production runs. Associates are also mentored 

in the development of their own work and are 

exposed to the many professional artists who 

use the facility to create their work. Through 

its Associate Training Program JamFactory 

has trained well over 100 glass artists from 

across Australia and around the world. 

This publication accompanies an exhibition 

of the same works at JamFactory in Adelaide 

from 13 May to 3 July 2022; at Canberra 

Glassworks from 24 August to 25 September 

2022; and at Australian Design Centre in 

Sydney from 7 October to 16 November 2022. 

fuseglassprize.com

Donors 

Thank you to our donors and partners. 

The FUSE Glass Prize is a truly shining 

example of how collective philanthropic 

support can create great opportunities for 

artists and add extraordinary value to the 

work of arts organisations. The prize evolved 

from conversations that began in 2014 

between passionate glass art collectors Jim 

and Helen Carreker and JamFactory. The 

prize launched in 2016 and was funded then, 

as it is now, entirely through private 

philanthropy and sponsorship. 

The Carrekers’ steadfast support has been 

ongoing. They gifted additional funds in 

2020 to enable significant evolution of the 

prize – including the development of the 

FUSE Glass Artist Residency award in the 

alternate years of the prize. Most recently 

the Carrekers have very generously provided 

further funds to set up an endowment that 

will ensure this important new residency 

component will be well supported over the 

next ten years. With this latest commitment, 

the Carrekers’ personal philanthropic support 

of FUSE has become the most significant 

private support in JamFactory’s history. 

Along with the Carrekers, we also want to 

particularly acknowledge the ongoing 

support of the Hon Diana Laidlaw AM, 

another founding donor who has continuously 

supported the prize since 2016 and who has 

so helpfully assisted in enlisting additional 

donors for the prize. We also acknowledge 

the ongoing generosity and enthusiasm of 

David McKee AM and Pam McKee as well as 

Susan Armitage, Sonia Laidlaw and Trina Ross 

and we warmly welcome new donors Maia 

Ambegaokar and Joshua Bishop. 

We are also very grateful for support 

since 2020 from the David & Dulcie Henshall 

Foundation, who have generously supported 

the Emerging Artist Category of FUSE 

through the David Henshall Emerging Artist 

Prize – in honour of the late David Henshall 

who was so committed to nurturing 

emerging talent. 

The FUSE Glass Artist Residency award 

noted above includes the presentation of a 

solo exhibition by the award recipient at the 

iconic South Australian house museum 

Carrick Hill, made possible by the generosity 

of Pamela Wall OAM and Ian Wall AM 

who have been committed supporters 

of FUSE since 2018. 

This generous group of donors has 

contributed funds for the prizes as well as 

the significant marketing and program 

costs, enabling JamFactory to continue 

to confidently promote this award as 

Australasia’s richest prize for artists working 

in glass. For artists, audiences and collectors 

who are drawn to glass, there are many great 

benefits arising from the continuing growth of 

this wonderful prize and we offer our sincere 

thanks to this group of visionary donors. 

JamFactory is also very grateful for the 

contribution of supporting sponsors, The 

Louise luxury accommodation in the Barossa 

and Seppeltsfield Wines who have continued 

to support the prize since 2016. 

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Janice Vitkovsky, Formation, 2022 

Photo: Pippy Mount

Judges 

Cobi Cockburn 

Glass Artist 

2020 FUSE Glass Prize Winner 

Cobi Cockburn is a graduate of Sydney 

College of the Arts, obtaining a Bachelor 

of Visual Arts (2000) and a Master of Fine 

Arts (2016). She is also a graduate of the 

Glass Workshop with a Bachelor of Visual 

Arts (Hons) (2006) from the 

Australian National University School 

of Art & Design, Canberra. She received 

the Tom Malone Prize in 2015 and 2009, 

the Ranamok Glass Prize in 2006 and 

the FUSE Glass Prize in 2020. Cockburn’s 

work has been published in New Glass 

Review; art ltd.; American Craft; and Craft 

Arts International. Her works are held in 

international collections including the 

Palm Springs Art Museum and the 

Corning Museum of Glass, New York. 

Cockburn is currently based in Kiama, 

New South Wales. 

Rebecca Evans 

Curator of Decorative Arts and Design 

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 

Rebecca Evans is the Art Gallery of 

South Australia’s Curator of Decorative 

Arts & Design. She is responsible for the 

Gallery’s extensive collection of Australian 

and international decorative arts objects, 

dating from antiquity to contemporary, 

a collection that includes ceramics, glass, 

furniture, metalwork, jewellery, fashion 

and textiles. Prior to joining the Gallery 

in 2016 she was Assistant Curator, 

Decorative Arts and Design (2008-2016) 

at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. 

Rebecca has strong interests in 

contemporary and historic craft 

and design and has curated To have 

and to hold, the Daalder contemporary 

jewellery collection (2018), Paola Sebastian: 

X (2017) and Catherine Truman (2016). 

She has also written extensively on 

Australian and international decorative 

arts and design. 

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Aimee Frodsham 

Artistic Director 

Canberra Glassworks, Kingston 

Aimee Frodsham is the Artistic Director 

at Canberra Glassworks, a role she 

has held since 2018. Supported by 

the dedicated Glassworks team, she 

oversees the exhibitions, artist 

residencies, studio access, education, 

community engagement and 

commissioning areas, working closely 

with a team of independent skilled 

glass makers. Aimee is a curator, producer 

and project manager with an expertise 

in glass making and contemporary 

Australia art, craft and design. After 

graduating from ANU Canberra School of 

Art in the late 90’s, she moved to London 

and began working at the V&A Museum 

and then at Tate in the role of Collection 

Planning Manager, a job that spanned all 

four of Tate’s galleries. Since returning to 

Australia in 2015, she has embedded 

herself in the glass making community 

at Canberra Glassworks.

Judges 

Justine Olsen 

Curator of Decorative Art and Design 

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa 

Tongarewa, Wellington 

Justine Olsen has been Curator of 

Decorative Art and Design at Museum of 

New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, since 

2010. Through freelancing and holding 

the same curatorial role at Auckland War 

Memorial Museum (1987-1994) she has 

seen generational shifts in craft practice. 

Justine has extensive experience in 

developing exhibitions, collections 

and writing across art and design 

both contemporary and historically. 

Her particular interest focusses on 20th 

and the 21st century craft and how art 

and design operate within local and 

global spheres. 

Brian Parkes 

Chief Executive Officer 

JamFactory, Adelaide 

Brian Parkes has been CEO at 

JamFactory in Adelaide since April 

2010. He has overseen significant 

development of the organisation’s 

exhibition and training programs and 

substantial growth in its audience and 

operational budget. He is passionate 

about the social, cultural and 

economic value of contemporary art, 

craft and design and has worked in senior 

curatorial and commercial management 

roles in the Australian cultural sector 

for over 30 years, including stints at the 

Australian Design Centre, the Museum of 

Contemporary Art and the National 

Gallery of Australia. He has curated 

numerous exhibitions focused on 

contemporary Australian craft and 

design including the first national survey 

of contemporary design; Freestyle: new 

Australian design for living in 2006 and 

has remained active in mentoring and 

supporting emerging artists, designers 

and creative entrepreneurs over the past 

two decades. 

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Glass and the pandemic: shining 

light through the blackness 

by Eva Czernis-Ryl 

“More than a method or a means of executing 

my ideas, glass blowing for me is a language. 

It is a way of finding self, of knowing, of 

worlding. It helps me connect ideas, people 

and places… Through Covid I was confronted 

with how much I relied on it to find ground.” 

Nadège Desgenetez, 2022 

For most of us 2020 and 2021 were the 

years we’d rather forget. By the time Margot 

Osborne submitted her Fuse Glass Prize 

catalogue essay in March 2020, we had 

endured a catastrophic bushfire season 

and the first variant of the COVID-19 

pandemic was on its rampant path of 

changing our lives. International borders 

were closing, the first Australian cases 

were isolating, bans on public gatherings 

were issued, and with no vaccine in sight, 

waves of painful lockdowns ensued. 

Eva Czernis-Ryl with Tim Edwards works from the Willoughby Bequest 

Commission in Powerhouse Museum’s photography studio, 2021

“The years 2020-21 will forever be a void for 

me and my work,” says Mittagong-based 

Scott Chaseling, who at the time was working 

— along with Arrernte artist Jenni Kemarre 

Martiniello in Canberra and Tim Edwards in 

Adelaide — on his Willoughby Bequest 

commission for Sydney’s Powerhouse 

Museum. “Cancellations and restrictions 

dominated a life usually full of creativity, 

travel and production... [However] within the 

blackness there were cracks that let the light 

in. Solitude and stasis formed a new way of 

thinking. This then became a new way of 

making. Though hard at times to see, these 

small cracks of light shone a path to amazing 

projects now in formation.” The initial ‘shock 

to the system’ caused by COVID-19 and 

resulting deleterious effects of the virus on 

the sector — closures of studio facilities, 

limited travel, and the cancellations and 

impossible delays of exhibitions, art fairs, 

workshops, teaching commitments and 

conferences both local and international — 

is a sentiment repeated by artists across 

Australia and to some extent in New Zealand. 

The annual 2020 GAS conference, which was 

to take place in Sweden with a contingent 

of presenting Australians, was indefinitely 

postponed and replaced with a virtual 

combination of live and pre-recorded 

presentations. The cancelled biennial 

Ausglass conference in Melbourne is now 

scheduled for February 2023. 

The bright light that shone the path through 

the darkness appeared in the form of a 

multitude of new online resources, including 

free glass programs, lectures and seminars. 

Alongside government incentives, cultural 

bodies such Arts ACT and the Australia 

Council changed their grant schemes to a 

program that was designed to help the arts 

community survive the economic effects 

of the pandemic, as many artists were not 

eligible to receive the government support. 

Canberra-based glass artist Lisa Cahill draws 

out Craft Victoria’s Studio Stories, an 

Instagram series that invited viewers into 

artist studios. “The Australian Design Centre 

in Sydney ramped up their online shop, 

heavily promoting the works to help garner 

sales for their artists,” Cahill says. In parallel 

with these programs, the ground-steadying 

support came from private collectors and 

institutions through acquisitions and 

commissions. Together with carefully 

restructured tertiary glass tuition, these 

initiatives played a vital role in enabling 

numerous artists, educators, gallerists and 

students to navigate their lives, practices 

and businesses around the pandemic. 

South Australia 

The FUSE Glass Prize significantly expanded 

in 2020 with additional philanthropic support 

for a new FUSE Glass Artist Residency award, 

valued at more than $20,000 in the alternate 

years of the prize. In early 2021, South 

Australian artist Alex Valero became the 

inaugural recipient; he is a former Glass Studio 

Associate at JamFactory and was the winner 

of the FUSE Glass Prize Emerging Artist 

Category in 2016. Valero’s exhibition The 

Study of the Sky was presented at Carrick 

Hill, a historic house museum and garden in 

Springfield, Adelaide. 

FUSE Glass Prize 2020, JamFactory, Adelaide 

Photo: JamFactory 

14

16

For the 2020 FUSE Glass Prize, the jury 

selected 18 finalists from entries received 

from across Australia and New Zealand. 

JamFactory’s CEO Brian Parkes noted: “… 

With the current travel restrictions in place, 

a robust and lengthy video conference was 

required to make the very tough decisions 

to arrive at just twelve established and six 

emerging finalists.” The winner in the 

Established Artist Category was Cobi 

Cockburn (NSW) who received a $20,000 

cash prize. Fellow finalists were Kate Baker 

(NSW), Clare Belfrage (SA), Penny Byrne 

(VIC), Cobi Cockburn (NSW), Nadège 

Desgenétez (ACT), Wendy Fairclough (SA), 

Marcel Hoogstad Hay (SA), Jeremy 

Lepisto (NSW), Madeline Prowd (SA), Yusuke 

Takemura (NSW), Hiromi Tango (NSW) and 

Kathryn Wightman (NZ). The winner of the 

David Henshall Emerging Artist Prize was 

Madisyn Zabel (ACT) who received a $2,500 

cash prize plus a professional development 

opportunity at JamFactory. The other 

finalists in this category were Hamish 

Donaldson (SA), Billy James Crellin and 

Bastien Thomas (VIC), Alexandra Hirst (SA), 

Erica Izard (NSW) and Ayano Yoshizumi (SA). 

The exhibition of finalist’s works was shown 

at JamFactory in September 2020 with a 

comprehensive digital showcase of the 

work. The exhibition also travelled to 

Australian Design Centre in Sydney where it 

was digitally launched on 9 October as part 

of Sydney Craft Week Festival 2020. 

In the meantime, acknowledging the 

pandemic’s devastating financial impacts on 

local art practices and centres, the Art Gallery 

of South Australia (AGSA) and the South 

Australian Artists Fund awarded an artist 

bursary to JamFactory’s Glass Studio Design 

Manager Liam Fleming. Fleming made new 

work that led to his selection as a finalist 

in the Ramsay Art Prize (2021) as well as 

display of his work, along with other finalists, 

at AGSA. Fleming was also named the 2021 

Guildhouse Fellow and acknowledges the 

significance of the fellowship in aiding a new 

direction. Post-Production, a work acquired 

by AGSA reveals Fleming’s more playful 

approach to glass that captures the joy of 

the hot glass making process. In early 2022 

Fleming also undertook a residency at 

Canberra Glassworks. 

Based in Adelaide, and amidst warnings of an 

imminent pandemic in the news, Adelaide’s 

Tom Moore completed a successful 

residency at Canberra Glassworks in early 

2020. His epic 2020 travelling exhibition 

JamFactory Icon Tom Moore: Abundant 

Wonder, accompanied by a series of short 

animated films and a monograph 

co-published by JamFactory and Wakefield 

Press, was a spectacular highlight of the year’s 

exhibition calendar, reaching large and diverse 

audiences across the region. The idea for the 

show originated with JamFactory in 2015 

when Moore was embarking on practice-led 

PhD research at UniSA. Career defining, the 

exhibition will tour until mid-2023 (although it 

closed four days earlier than scheduled due 

to a snap lockdown in Adelaide and was 

cancelled entirely at Hamilton, Victoria). In 

2020, Moore was also invited to curate a 

display at AGSA of ‘some of the gallery’s 

Liam Fleming, Post-Production, 2021 

Photo: Grant Hancock

quirkiest plant and animal pieces’ arranged 

around his earlier works in the collection. 

In early 2021, at JamFactory’s invitation, 

he installed groups of works into six display 

cases repurposed from historic public 

telephone booths at the Adelaide Railway 

Station. The striking dioramas prepared for 

these new objects, that typically combine 

plant and animal forms with mechanical 

elements, morphed into a more elaborate 

installation scenery, complete with works 

spinning on turntables inset into landscaped 

vistas, in his solo exhibition at Beaver 

Galleries in Canberra which opened in late 

2021. Moore’s fantastical glass creatures from 

the future combine whimsy with profound 

questions about the overexploitation of 

the environment and human-induced 

climate change. 

Like Moore, Adelaide’s Naomi Hunter is 

one of UniSA’s postgraduate students who 

have recently completed their PhD and she 

now works from a collective studio in 

Edwardstown, SA. Since her time as Artist 

in Residence at the South Australian 

Health and Medical Research Institute with 

Neurologist Cedric Bardy, she has continued 

to work with the art, science and medicine 

theme. Hunter was a finalist in the 2020 

National Emerging Art Glass Prize at the 

National Art Glass Gallery in Wagga Wagga 

and in the Waterhouse Natural Science Art 

Prize 2020. The latter featured the mixed 

media work A measure of …a life/time which 

commented on human life and passing time 

through an installation that included 65 glass 

test tubes representing her resting heart beats 

per minute. 

At UniSA, Gabriella Bisetto is senior lecturer 

for Contemporary Art and supervises the 

Contemporary Art Honors and Master’s 

programs. In the glass workshop, she teaches 

the undergraduate courses ‘Hot Glass 

Techniques and Processes’ and ‘Kiln Formed 

Glass Techniques and Processes’. She 

comments on the fast expanding potential 

of glass as a contemporary art medium: “The 

skills taught in these courses equip students 

with the necessary knowledge of how to work 

as professional emerging artists in the field of 

glass, or, if they are not specialising in glass, 

how they can integrate the materiality of glass 

into their major studies such as jewellery, 

sculpture, printing, ceramics, photography, 

painting, product design or architecture,” 

Bisetto says. “The change of program from 

a Bachelor of Visual Arts 5 years ago to a 

Bachelor of Contemporary Art has changed 

a number of things, but most apparent is the 

deeper encouragement to experiment with 

a range of material qualities in particular 

disciplines. This approach does put less 

emphasis on traditional techniques and more 

emphasis on creating new outcomes. This 

mode suits the contemporary approach to art 

practice but does still rub against the master/ 

apprentice Bauhaus model of working that 

Australia is coming out of.” As an example of 

recent work of her students, Bisetto points 

to multi-media sculptural pieces of crossdisciplinary 

artist Sally Craven, presented in 

her solo installation at Sydney gallery Cement 

Fondu in early 2022. In these works, process 

of working with material is transferred as 

embodied knowledge through making when 

“glass becomes waterfalls escaping from 

JamFactory Icon 2020 Tom Moore: Abundant Wonder, JamFactoy, Adelaide 

Photo: Grant Hancock 

18

fissures formed in plaster silica during kiln 

casting…”. The result was suggestive of 

reproductive organs and seed banks and 

offered new reading. While Craven embraced 

technical accidents to create works imbued 

with a new meaning, Bisetto does stress the 

importance of knowledge of how to work 

with glass and is concerned about the 

impact of the pandemic. In early 2020, all 

face-to-face glass courses were cancelled, 

resulting in a 6-month gap that is still 

being felt as the current third year students 

were just starting when COVID-19 began 

and missed the foundational glass courses. 

Similarly, COVID-19 has impacted classes at 

JamFactory’s Glass Studio. While the program 

aims to host an international visiting artist and 

a local visiting artist to teach a masterclass 

each year, the planned 2020 masterclass by 

Seattle-based glass artist Granite Calimpong 

and those by Sydney’s Ben Edols and 

Canberra’s Annette Blair had to be postponed. 

Although the Glass Studio’s visiting artist 

program has been affected, there has been 

a significant increase in demand for 

individual beginner’s glassblowing classes 

in between lockdowns, with 2021 almost 

tripling expected class numbers and 2022 

starting with similar interest. 

Adelaide-based glass artist Jessica Loughlin 

regrets missing voices and perspectives 

offered by international opportunities, such 

20

as attending the opening of the 2020 Loewe 

Foundation Craft Prize at the Musée des 

Arts Decorative in Paris where she was just 

the second ever Australian finalist; the 

pandemic transformed it into a 3D rendered 

virtual exhibition. Nevertheless, there were 

exciting highlights: her successful solo 

exhibition at Sydney’s Sabbia Gallery which 

opened in May 2020, just at the start of 

the lockdown, as well as a solo exhibition 

Architetture di Luce at gallery Caterina 

Tognon in Venice, alongside Architetture 

per il Corpo by the acclaimed contemporary 

jeweller Giampaolo Babetto. We can expect 

more of her hauntingly beautiful, glowing 

landscapes of subtly shifting light and colour 

in her 2022 exhibition JamFactory ICON 

Jessica Loughlin: of light, due to open in July. 

Borderline, her 6-piece work selected for New 

Glass Now, 2019 – the Corning Museum of 

Glass third iteration of this landmark 

exhibition series. The exhibition, which 

features the works of nine Australians, is 

travelling and was still on show in February 

2022 at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian 

Museum, New York, USA. 

While the 2019 touring exhibition 

JamFactory ICON Clare Belfrage: A Measure 

of Time opened at all planned venues in 2020 

and 2021 accompanied by digital gallery talks, 

the impact of the pandemic on her practice 

was significant. Belfrage highlights 

cancellations of international arts fairs, a 

commercial staple for many galleries in 

Europe and USA, including Adrian Sassoon 

Gallery in the UK which represents her and 

several other Australian artists including Tim 

Edwards, Giles Bettison and New Zealand’s 

Galia Amsel. She had to reschedule a solo 

exhibition at Traver Gallery in Seattle, USA, 

and adds to her ‘postponed’ list an Australian 

group show at Ebeltoft Glass Museum that will 

hopefully run next year. Belfrage’s solo show 

Deep Skin at Sabbia Gallery in Sydney went 

ahead in September 2020, just as public 

gathering restrictions temporality ceased. 

With interstate borders still almost 

impenetrable, as a local I was asked to attend 

the opening day to speak about Belfrage’s 

work that I knew was incredibly challenging 

to make as both Belfrage and Tim Edwards, 

who share their home studio, were not able 

to blow glass for about three months and 

consequently had to work to much shorter 

periods of development and production. 

Fortuitously, Edwards had glass ‘blanks’ in 

reserve so was able to cut them for his two 

solo shows at Sabbia Gallery in February and 

at Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane, in November 

2021. And for Belfrage, the many schedule 

changes enabled realisation of new design 

ideas that had been brewing for some years: 

assisted by Tom Moore, she set up a flame 

working station in her studio to make patches 

of intense pattern, their inclusion in the hot 

glass process opening up exciting possibilities. 

A finalist in the 2020 FUSE Glass Prize and in 

the 2021 Tom Malone Prize, she presented an 

exhibition, through JamFactory, in the historic 

phone booths at Adelaide Railway Station. 

Belfrage’s most recent news is her selection, 

along with Sydney’s Kate Baker, for the 

Toyama International Glass Triennial; their 

works were chosen from 1,110 entries from 

46 countries. 

Clare Belfrage, Elements of a Place II, 2021 

Photo: Pippy Mount

An important highlight of the last two years 

was Belfrage’s mentorship and collaboration 

with an emerging Pitjantjatjara artist from 

Ninuku Arts Centre in the Anangu 

Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, 

South Australia. Selinda Davidson spent 

blocks of time in Belfrage’s studio where 

she painted on glass blanks supplied by 

JamFactory. They also worked in 

JamFactory’s hotshop where Belfrage blew 

the forms interpreting Davidson’s drawings. 

These works, which appropriate the Swedish 

graal technique as a new vehicle of cultural 

expression for the Ninuku community, were 

shown as part of Sydney Contemporary 

Sabbia and Ngayuku Kamiku Ngayuku 

Tjukurpa (My Grandmother, My Story), a joint 

exhibition with Molly Nampitjin Miller at 

JamFactory’s Seppeltsfield Gallery as part 

of Tarnanthi 2021, the AGSA’s Festival of 

Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait 

Islander Art. Mandi King, Ninuku Arts Centre 

manager at the time, notes that these 

collaborative workshops were “a miracle 

to pull off given not only rolling COVID 

lockdowns, but once in a generation 

flooding in the APY lands making the roads 

out unpassable”. She reports that “over a 

matter of weeks in March 2020, the pandemic 

and subsequent lockdowns erased or 

significantly delayed a whole calendar year 

of highly anticipated events and projects, and 

the studio was left to reimagine its creative 

and business plans almost entirely from 

scratch, not knowing what the future might 

hold or how the illness might affect the 

health of our community…[However], 

despite the adversity presented by delays 

and cancellation of events, logistical dilemmas 

and challenges of learning new digital and 

remote business models, Ninuku was still 

able to realise the majority of its exhibition 

schedule giving platforms to a wide range of 

emerging, mid-career, and senior artists to 

show their work”. King acknowledges 

additional resources from government 

funding bodies such as Arts SA, IVAIS, and 

the Australia Council, as well as federal and 

state employment support schemes. In total 

over 30 Ninuku artists exhibited works in 

various media, and exhibitions involving glass 

also included Yanyatjatjari: Jimmy Donegan, 

a solo show of the senior Ngaanyatjarra 

painter, of paintings on glass and linen at Raft 

Art Space in Alice Springs, Northern Territory. 

The winner of the 2020 Yalingwa Fellowship 

awarded to First Nations artists, Kokatha/ 

Nukunu contemporary artist Yhonnie 

Scarce who makes distinctive glass-based 

sculptures and installations that often 

reference the ongoing effects of colonisation 

on Indigenous people. Following her COVID-19 

disrupted residency at Icon, Birmingham, UK, 

in 2020, Scarce showed her works in several 

exhibitions, including Monster Theatres in the 

Adelaide Biennial at the Art Gallery of South 

Australia, Looking Glass: Judy Watson and 

Yhonnie Scarce, a touring show organised by 

TarraWarra Museum of Art, Melbourne, and 

Yhonnie Scarce: Missile Park, at Australian 

Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Her 

Thunder Raining Poison, 2015, an installation 

with over 2000 blown-glass yams and 

responding to the Maralinga site of nuclear 

testing in South Australia, was part of the 

Selinda Davidson, Karru Tjukurpa II, 2021 

Photo: Sam Roberts 

22

24

2020/21 Know My Name exhibition at the 

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. 

Following on from a series of shows in Korea, 

USA, Paris and Canada in 2020 and 2021, 

Scarce’s upcoming international exhibitions 

in France, Japan and England will also most 

likely include glassworks. 

Western Australia and ACT 

Mel Douglas (ACT) was the winner of the 

2020 Tom Malone Prize for her work Tonal 

Value, a series of five glass drawings on paper, 

which entered the State Art Collection joining 

works by previous winners. Tonal Value 

was selected from works of fifteen finalists 

including Kate Baker (NSW) Clare Belfrage 

(SA), Peter Bowles (TAS), Lisa Cahill (ACT), 

Mel Douglas (ACT), Hannah Gason (ACT), 

David Hay (WA), Ben Edols and Kathy 

Elliott (NSW), Marc Leib (WA), Jeremy 

Lepisto (NSW), Jessica Loughlin (SA), Nick 

Mount (SA), Kirstie Rea (NSW), Jason Sims 

(SA) and Jarred Wright (QLD). The judges, 

who included Sydney’s Warren Langley, stated 

about the winning work: “… A study in colour, 

form and transition, balance and counterbalance, 

it is both subtle and strangely 

energetic and animated. While a quiet work, 

it has an undeniable, even commanding, 

presence as each of the unit’s two 

overlapping forms modulate over the work’s 

length; moving from light to dark the work 

seems to shift into presence from absence, or 

from light to shadow… Composed from a type 

of printing and kiln fusing with glass powder, 

Tonal Value also evidences her commitment to 

creative experimentation and evolution with 

the always challenging medium of glass.” 

A lecturer at the Canberra School of Art, 

Australian National University, Douglas says 

that returning to study after finishing her PhD 

in 2020 was “a gift for me… It allowed me to 

have a focused period to experiment, explore 

and refine my ideas and ways of working. I 

learnt so much about myself as a maker, my 

practice and the extraordinary material with 

which I work.” While the pandemic altered 

her 2020 and 2021 schedule, she was able 

to mount a 2020 solo exhibition at Heller 

Gallery in New York, USA, and at Traver 

Gallery Seattle, USA, in 2021 where she 

showed Map + Measure. This major exhibition 

of refined work employed a minimalist 

aesthetic that expands our understanding 

of glass as a sculptural medium by exploring 

how line and form can define and defy our 

understanding of space and volume. Douglas 

has just been shortlisted in the Loewe 

Foundation Craft Prize 2022 for her engraved 

glass sculpture Deviation. This coveted 

international prize is awarded annually to 

artists who demonstrate an exceptional ability 

to create objects of superior aesthetic value. 

This year’s 30 finalists were chosen by a panel 

of experts from over 3,100 submissions by 

artists representing 116 countries and regions. 

Their works will be exhibited at the Seoul 

Museum of Craft Art (SeMoCA), Korea, 

later this year. 

The 2021 Tom Malone Prize featured the work 

of thirteen finalists: Kate Baker (NSW), Clare 

Belfrage (SA), Hannah Gason (ACT), Marcel 

Hoogstad Hay (SA), Rita Kellaway (SA), Gerry 

King (SA), Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello (ACT), 

Peter Kovacsy (WA), Jeremy Lepisto (NSW), 

Mel Douglas, Deviation, 2020 

Photo: David Paterson

Madeline Prowd (SA), Kirstie Rea (NSW), 

Ayano Yoshizumi (SA) and Madisyn Zabel 

(ACT). The winner of the $15,000 acquisitive 

prize was Ayano Yoshizumi for her 

mould-blown sculptural works ICON #2010. 

Originally from Japan, Yoshizumi has worked 

from Adelaide’s JamFactory since 2019 after 

completing her placement as the second 

Asialink Artist in Residence at Canberra 

Glassworks. Her refreshingly different 

small-scale works from a series influenced 

by the Japanese concept of ma (negative 

space) were first seen in the 2020 FUSE Glass 

Prize. In early 2022 Yoshizumi showed work in 

the biennial Milano Vetro-35 exhibition in Italy 

where she was one of 32 finalists, and in the 

Elizabeth R. Raphael Founder’s Prize in 

Pittsburgh, USA. In March she left Australia 

to take up a position at Toyama Institute 

of Glass Art in Toyama, Japan. 

While the direction of the FUSE and Tom 

Malone prizes continue unchanged, the date 

and format for the postponed biennial Klaus 

Moje Glass Award is still to be confirmed 

following the Canberra Glassworks 

announcement in October 2021 of the 

appointment of Elizabeth Rogers, former 

Chief Executive of Regional Arts NSW, as 

the new CEO. Rogers pledges “continued 

collaboration with artists from other fields and 

with our First Nations People.” It should also 

be noted that 2020 saw the legendary Klaus 

Moje AO (died 2016) included in the ACT 

Honour Walk in 2020, an award recognising 

his role as the founding workshop head of 

the Australian National University (ANU) 

School of Art Glass Workshop and a 

significant contributor to the development 

of Canberra Glassworks. 

Canberra-based Kirstie Rae, an artist who 

trained under Klaus Moje, won the 2019 Klaus 

Moje Glass Award for her kiln-formed work 

What remains. Selected from 18 finalists, 

Rae received $10,000 in prize money and a 

four-week residency at Canberra Glassworks. 

Also a finalist in the 2020 Tom Malone Prize, 

Rae was the 2020 Design Canberra festival 

designer-in-residence making new work that 

responded to the Festival’s theme of ‘care’. 

Her multi-piece commissioned glass sculpture 

With Care, composed of her signature glass 

blankets balanced in a threshold, was 

isplayed at Craft ACT during the annual 

three-week event, celebrating Canberra as a 

global city of design and a living design 

laboratory. For the past two years, Rae has 

been working towards a major retrospective 

show at the Toyama Glass Art Museum in 

Japan, opening in March this year. Stretching 

back to 1986, her graduation year, Kirstie Rea 

— the breadth of stillness will be a milestone 

in the artist’s career. The show will include a 

new installation of her 2021 work Reflect — 

an open invitation, which will show glass 

generated images with float glass panels and 

invite viewers into a space for reflection. 

In 2020, Canberra Glassworks continued 

to pursue a balance between working with 

glass artists and supporting non-glass artists. 

A reduced number of five exhibitions were 

realised due to lockdown restrictions, three of 

26

Kirstie Rae, With Care, 2020 

Photo: Lean Timms

Scott Chaseling, Ex Nihilo #1, 2020 

Photo: Brenton McGeachie 

28

which showcased artworks by artists new to 

using glass within their practices. Girramay/ 

Yidinji/Kuku-Yalanji artist Tony Albert (QLD/ 

NSW) created a significant new body of work 

for the exhibition Duty of Care and the 22nd 

Biennale of Sydney: NIRIN. It showcased his 

stained-glass window series Brothers and 

re-cast items of vintage objects made during 

his 2019 residency at Canberra Glassworks 

supported by a team led by Ruth Oliphant. 

Built on the body of work created for the 

exhibition Visible at QAGOMA in 2018, 

Albert explored notions of invisibility, using 

the transparency of glass to explore the 

concept of the lack of visibility of 

marginalised people. One of his windows 

was later included in the Unsettled exhibition 

at the Australian Museum in Sydney. Four 

glass artists, Simon Maberley (NSW; Smoke 

and Mirrors), Hannah Gason (Interval, Drill Hall 

Gallery, Canberra), Harriet Schwarzrock (ACT) 

and Brendan Van Hek (NSW) were supported 

by Canberra Glassworks in exhibitions, two of 

which developed in partnership with Suki & 

Hugh Gallery and Contour 556. Schwarzrock’s 

Spaces between movement and stillness for 

the National Portrait Gallery comprised 120 

glass-filled and electrically charged pulsating 

hearts in a captivating installation of colour 

and movement. Brendan Van Hek’s exhibition 

Pattern and Effect also continued his 

engagement with neon, and his glass-blown 

works for the 2021 exhibition An Elaborate 

Scheme at Sydney’s Sarah Cottier 

Gallery were supported by a team led by 

Tom Rowney. 

Canberra Glassworks’ exhibition program 

for 2020 has been made possible with the 

support of the extended residency program 

throughout 2019 and into 2020. They hosted 

11 residencies for artists, the impact of travel 

restrictions and lockdowns led to two 

international residencies being cancelled and 

seven national residencies postponed. The 

artists in residence in 2020 were: Thomas 

Foundation Artists in Residence (TFAiR) Rob 

Schwartz (ACT), Jessica Murtagh (SA), and 

Madisyn Zabel (ACT), as well as Artists in 

Residence (AiR) Tom Moore (SA), Peter 

Nilsson (ACT), and Megan Cope (QLD/VIC). 

Canberra Glassworks also supported Bethany 

Lick (ACT) through the Emerging Artists 

Support Scheme (EASS), Graduates in 

Residence (GiR) Mark Penny (SA) and Bermi 

Dreyer (ACT), and 2020’s Klaus Moje Award 

Residency, Kirstie Rea. 

In January 2021, Canberra Glassworks staged 

Scott Chaseling’s delayed exhibition The 

Redemption of Colour, in which the artist 

encouraged the audience to immerse 

themselves in the rainbow of colours as they 

walked around the panel made from coloured 

glass tubes, the design of which followed on 

from his earlier Erebus panel commissioned 

by the Powerhouse Museum. Chaseling now 

works from independent Studio OneFive in 

Mittagong, NSW, established with Gina Fairley, 

with a focus on low impact manufacturing 

and sustainable practice.

In May 2021, Canberra Glassworks presented 

Unbroken Connections by Quandamooka 

artist Megan Cope from Minjerribah (North 

Stradbroke Island) in South East Queensland. 

During her residency in 2020 and 2021, 

supported by glass artist Spike Deane and 

Peter Nilsson, Cope worked with a variety of 

techniques to explore the ongoing connection 

her People have had with the island for 

thousands of years and the unbroken 

connections between country, family and 

nature. Artists in residence in 2021 were 

Thomas Foundation Mentorship (TFMEN) 

recipient Karena Keys, Ngaio Fitzpatrick, 

Jacqueline Bradley and the acclaimed 

hyperrealist artist Patricia Piccinini, who 

included a range of unique works made from 

glass in A Miracle Constantly Repeated, a 

show-ecosystem of objects, video, sound and 

light for Rising festival. Piccini’s project was 

supported by glass artists Annette Blair, Spike 

Deane, Tom Rowney, Peter Nilsson, Jacqueline 

Knight and Emma-Kate Hart. Glass teams at 

Canberra Glassworks also worked with other 

contemporary artists on their exhibitions, 

such as the Melbourne-based Mutti Mutti/ 

Yorta Yorta/Wamba Wamba/Boonwurrung 

artist and designer, Maree Clarke, (2021 

retrospective Maree Clarke: Ancestral 

Memories at the NGV, Melbourne, and The 

National 2021 at the MCA in Sydney) Gurindji/ 

Malngin/Mudburra artist Brenda L Croft 

(installation hand/made/held/ground at 

Canberra Museum and Gallery), as well as 

Elliat Rich’s (NT) collaborative work with 

Professor Joel Person, Otherscope Mirror, 

a Powerhouse Hybrid Commission 2020. 

Canberra Glassworks closed with two hours’ 

notice on 12 August 2021, with artists 

returning with limited access 6 weeks later 

and galleries reopening to the public and 

limited public programs in December. In 

February, Canberra Glassworks presented 

The Tener by Jacqueline Bradley (ACT) with 

her new body of work developed as part of 

the Artist in Residence program at Canberra 

Glassworks in 2021-22. 

There were major changes to the Australian 

National University’s (ANU) teaching program 

and staffing when a major restructure 

coincided with the pandemic. Following 

Richard Whiteley’s departure in late 2019 to 

take up a role of Senior Programs Manager at 

The Studio, Corning Museum of Glass, New 

York, the new Senior Lecturer in the School of 

Art and Design, Jeffrey Sarmiento, was only 

able to arrive in Canberra in early 2022; he 

taught online from the UK until that semester. 

Two periods of intensive delivery in late 

2020 and late 2021 made it possible for 

students to experience hands on classes in 

the workshop. Nadège Dezgenetez, who has 

taught in the Glass Workshop since 2005, 

believes that Covid measures crystallised 

the urgency of providing shared embodied 

experience to students, as a way of cultivating 

respect, empathy and accountability. In 2021, 

Desgenétez was invited to contribute to the 

40th anniversary edition of French journal 

Revue de la céramique et du verre. 

For Lisa Cahill, an ACT studio artist who had 

just completed a major studio renovation and 

began working on exhibition and commission 

work, the pandemic’s arrival spelt a major 

disruption. Eventually, the delayed projects 

were restarted amidst a surprising spike in 

online interest. In July, she delivered her Pulse 

exhibition at Sabbia Gallery, which featured 

her dramatic wall panel Himalayan Cedar. 

30

Maree Clark, Ancestral Memory 2, 2019 

Courtesy of the artist and Vivien Anderson Gallery. Photo: Brenton McGeachie

When building projects were starting to move 

forward again, she was able to complete a 

Donor Wall made from sponsor-funded 

glass tiles for the Grafton Regional Gallery 

renovation, a fundraising initiative of the 

Gallery Director, Niomi Sands. She is currently 

developing new exhibition work in response 

to the devastating effects of the bushfires 

of January 2020, which she feels have been 

overshadowed by the pandemic, as well as 

working on a new large architectural artwork 

for a hotel foyer in Georgia, Atlanta, USA. 

Like Cahill, Jeremy Lepisto also works from 

an independent glass studio, Jeremy 

Lepisto Projects, in Queanbeyan where 

he helps artists, designers and architects 

create their ideas in custom made glass. 

He had a solo exhibition at Thor’s Hammer 

Mixing Room Gallery, Canberra, Basic 

Constructs — Jeremy Lepisto’21, showing 

works inspired by facades of buildings, city 

power lines and the effects of time on the 

built environment. 

Craft ACT kept going in 2020, and in July 

2021 announced the appointment of Jodie 

Cunningham, as the new Chief Executive 

Officer and Artistic Director. During the 2021 

lockdown, their annual Design Canberra 

festival was cancelled and replaced with 

Nurture, a program of virtual and small-group 

events, including an auction of artworks. 

Craft ACT glass exhibitions included Distorted 

Trajectories with works made using 

traditional Venetian cane and murrine 

techniques by Marcel Hoogstad Hay and 

Madeline Prowd in 2020, and Mark Elliott’s 

fabulous travelling show The Essence of 

Cloud, in 2021. Sydney-based Elliot’s 

fantastical exhibition storyline, developed 

around the quest to extract the essence of 

clouds using flame-worked glass and other 

media, demonstrated that the artist can 

also extract pure joy from his mesmerised 

audiences. Coinciding with Craft ACT’s 50th 

Anniversary, the gallery is currently showing 

You get a Rhythm about it, an exhibition of 

the work of Peter Minson spanning his 

60-year career as a lampworker. 

In November 2020, enriching Canberra’s 

glass-exhibiting galleries network, a new 

cross-disciplinary gallery, Grainger, opened 

in Fyshwick presenting works by Lisa Cahill, 

Peter Nilsson and Jessica Murtagh from 

Adelaide. Murtagh’s work was highly 

32

Peter Minson, You get a Rhythm about it, Craft ACT 

Photo: Brenton McGeachie

34

commended in the Wagga Wagga National 

Emerging Glass Art Prize in 2020; she was a 

finalist in the Milano Vetro -35 glass prize in 

Italy and has recently showed a body of work 

alongside fellow glass artist Rita Kellaway, in 

Vi Naturae at Urban Cow Studio in Adelaide. 

Victoria 

In Victoria, a major highlight of 2021 was 

Blanche Tilden—ripple effect: a 25-year survey, 

a Geelong Gallery travelling exhibition that 

celebrates the career of the trailblazing 

Melbourne-based jeweller Blanche Tilden. 

Tilden’s minimalist jewellery explores both 

glass as a medium and a metaphor for the 

connections between making, industry, the 

wearable object and the body. With delays 

due to public health orders, following its 

staging in NSW, SA and QLD, the show will 

conclude at the Canberra Museum & Gallery 

in 2023. For Melbourne’s fledgling glass studio 

Hothaus run by Amanda Dziedic and Laurel 

Kohut, the Delta-variant pandemic spelled a 

major upheaval in the completion of a new 

studio still awaiting a furnace. Job keeper 

payment, rent reduction and email advice 

from Canberra’s Tom Rowney meant however 

that they had a working hot glass studio in 

April and survived a new wave of Omicron 

restrictions; Amanda was able to make new 

work for Nautilus, a group show in Sydney’s 

St Cloche Gallery, and Kohut exhibited in 

Backyard Stories, part of the TENT art 

weekend in Auckland, New Zealand. 

New South Wales 

In New South Wales, opening the doors of the 

Old Teacher’s College on the main campus 

of the University of Sydney in 2020 was a 

momentous milestone for the Sydney College 

of the Arts. The successful completion of 

the move from Callan Park to the new home 

reimagined by ARM Architects and overseen 

by Andrew Lavery, Director of the School, 

provided a welcome opportunity for the Glass 

Studio to seamlessly fuse with the university. 

The external hot workshop screen, which 

you can look through from outside, partially 

reveals state-of-the-art studios complete with 

a Wet Dog furnace and three glory holes. 

When the pandemic hit, a well-ventilated 

space, rotation of students, online projects 

and artist talks, ensured that the studio 

remained busy teaching glass as a 

contemporary art subject. Like Bisetto at 

UniSA, Cobi Cockburn, who oversees the SCA 

glass studio, stresses the continuing priority 

given to process but also notes a shift from 

the medium specific glass student to that 

exploring cross-disciplinary paths that may 

offer further professional or artistic 

opportunities. One such student is 

Sydney-based artist Anna May Kirk who 

explores the possibilities of glass both as a 

material and metaphor used in the broader 

contexts of art and science. For Pyriscene: 

After Fire, her 2021 sensory installation made 

from blown-glass and eucalyptus oils, and 

commissioned by the Powerhouse Museum 

for the acclaimed Eucalyptusdom exhibition, 

Kirk collaborated with scent-maker Ainslie 

Walker while looking at the iconic gum tree 

through the prism of an imagined future 

in multispecies collaboration with the 

fire-adapted eucalypt. 

Blanche Tilden, Flow 03, 2016 


Sydney’s Sabbia Gallery excelled at keeping 

the gallery open virtually and intermittently 

in the gallery spaces throughout 2020 and 

2021. In addition to those exhibiting in group 

shows, artists presenting solo shows were: Tim 

Edwards (Elements), Brenden Scott French 

(Temporal Looping), Emma Varga (Forces 

of Nature), Madisyn Zabel (Edge), Matthew 

Curtis (Lumnious Margin), Christine Cathie 

(Light Cast), Jessica Louglin (The Blue 

Distance), Lisa Cahill (Pause), Clare Belfrage 

(Deep Skin) and Nick Mount (The Spring). 

Holly Grace’s A Lost Song inaugurated Sabbia’s 

2022 exhibition program, followed by Giles 

Bettison’s Suspend in March. 

Emma Varga’s (NSW) show at Sabbia was the 

first of four in her Revival series supported by 

a CREATE NSW grant and marking 50 years 

of her career as a glass artist. Further 

exhibitions will be shown at Australian 

Contemporary, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery and 

Manly Art Gallery & Museum. In September 

2021, Varga exhibited her pâte de verre objects 

at Venice Glass Week 2021 HUB exhibition. 

Kate Baker’s (NSW) significant achievements 

include her inclusion at the Toyama 

International Glass Triennial 2021. More 

recently her work from Within Matter series 

has been announced as a finalist in the 2022 

Tom Bass Sculpture Prize. Baker’s entry in the 

prestigious Corning Museum of Glass New 

Glass Now exhibition is still showing along 

with works by Matthew Curtis, Mel Douglas, 

Nadège Dezgenétez, Jessica Loughlin, Kirstie 

Rea, Blanche Tilden, Jennifer Kemarre 

Martiniello and Judi Elliott at the Renwick 

Gallery, Smithsonian Museum, Washington DC, 

USA and will travel to the Toyama Museum of 

Glass, Japan, in later 2022. Baker’s much 

anticipated solo exhibition at The Shanghai 

Museum of Glass is due to open in April 2023. 

Ben Edols and Kathy Elliott collaborated with 

Leanne Tobin, a multidisciplinary artist of 

Dharug heritage, in the production of The Call 

of Ngura, a major component in her installation 

Ngalawan – We Live, We Remain: The 

Running of the Eels, 2022. Commissioned for 

the 23rd Biennale of Sydney for display in the 

cavernous space of Sydney’s Cutaway at 

Barangaroo, the work shares a Dharug 

creation story and the glass eels and their 

reflections remind us of the ongoing fight the 

Dharug have endured since colonisation and 

the adaptive qualities of the eel. The smaller 

clear glass eels were made at Denizen Glass 

Studio run by Rob Wynne in North Manly and 

the larger coloured glass eels were made in 

Canberra Glassworks in January 2022. 

During the past two years of lockdowns and 

disruption, Sydney glass artist NOT continued 

his interest in recycled, archival or outmoded 

materials. Unable to access Canberra 

Glassworks where he makes his glass, NOT 

made works from discontinued neon glass, 

old television screen and uranium glass for 

Invisible Hand, his solo exhibition at Sydney’s 

Kronenberg Mais Wright in September 2020. 

Kiln formed glassworks made between 

lockdowns were displayed in Song cycle, a set 

of singing bowls in lead crystal glass that was 

shortlisted for the 66th Blake Prize at Casula 

Powerhouse in February 2021, and Syntagma 

Square, a sculpture made from recycled 

television and lead crystal glass, which won 

the second prize in the Adelaide Hellenic 

Studies inaugural By George! Biennial 

International Art Prize in October 2021. 

36

View of ‘Eucalyptusdom’ showing commissioned work, Pyriscence: After Fire by Anna May Kirk. 

Photo: Zan Wimberley

New Zealand 

In New Zealand, artists and gallerists worked 

hard and creatively during the past two years, 

ensuring a lively presence both online and 

within the public and commercial spaces, 

reports Justine Olsen, Curator of Decorative 

Arts at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa 

Tongarewa in Wellington. Sustainable 

practices have been of considerable interest 

and in 2021, Lava Glass from Taupō 

announced that they have achieved a carbon 

neutral status. There has been a significant 

presence of Māori glass artists building an 

important cultural profile. Among significant 

achievements in 2021 is the majestic waka 

(canoe) Guide Kaiārahi made from hundreds 

of shimmering crystals by Reuben Paterson 

(Te Arawa, Ngāti Rangitihi, Tūhourangi and 

Scottish ancestry) and the soaring installation 

at the entrance to Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o 

Tāmaki, made with UAP Brisbane and owned 

and supported by the Edmiston Trust. The 

work refers to an apparition of a waka taua 

or war canoe sighted by local Māori guide 

Kaiārahi Te Paea Hinerangi on an excursion 

across Lake Tarawera days before the 

eruption in 1886. Reuben Paterson whose 

whanau or family continue to live in the 

region, sees this work as a ‘guide, a leader and 

escort’ during uncertain times. Also showing 

in 2021 at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki 

was the glass installation Eunoia by Te Rongo 

Kirkwood (Wai o Hua, Ngai Tai ki Tamaki, Te 

Kauwerau a Maki, Ngapuhi, Taranaki and of 

English and Scottish ancestry). It was part of 

the ground-breaking Māori art show Toi Tū 

Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art. Te Rongo 

Kirkwood drew on kahuki, a traditional Māori 

weaving pattern to create a work informed 

by whakapapa or genealogy. Later in 2021, 

she was the first recipient of the Residency at 

New Zealand Glassworks in Whanganui. The 

ensuing exhibition focused on the cultural 

significance of the hue or gourd and was 

held in New Zealand Glassworks, Whanganui 

in early 2022. Kirkwood’s work involves the 

Te Ao Māori or Maori world view. During mid 

2021, artist Mike Crawford (Ngāti Raukawa 

and of Scottish descent) showed his cast 

glass in an exhibition Roa at Masterworks 

Gallery, Auckland. During lockdown in 

March 2020 Masterworks Gallery created the 

online exhibition From the studio featuring 

the work of Luke Jacob along those by his 

glass colleagues, including his father John 

Croucher. Croucher’s death in September 

2021 was a major loss to the glass community 

who mourned the passing of co-founder of 

legendary Gaffer Glass, who developed with 

John Leggot and distributed a supreme range 

of coloured glass since 1993. Notable 2021 

Masterwork Gallery exhibitions included 

Wendy Fairclough’s Commonalities II and 

Emma Camden’s Void from which the 

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa 

acquired Pillar. Exhibitions in 2020-21 at 

Avid Gallery, Wellington, included Luminous, 

a group show of glass artists Crystal Chain 

Gang, Vicki Fanning, Emma Camden, David 

Murray, Layla Walter, Christine Cathie, Claudia 

Borella, Stephen Bradbourne and Elizabeth 

McClure. Emma Camden produced 

Passing Through, Stephen Bradbourne 

showed his murine technique in Linework 

and Vicki Fanning showed her mixed-media 

forms in User Generated Content. Artist 

Te Rongo Kirkwood, Eunoia, 2020 

Courtesy of the artist and Milford Galleries Dunedin 

Photo: Jennifer French. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki

collaborations included Mark Braunias with 

glass artist Jarred Wright at Jonathon Smart 

Gallery, Christchurch, November 2021. Glass 

community news from New Zealand Society 

of Artists in Glass included the development 

of a new website. The Society has a new 

president, the renowned Whanganu-based 

glass artist Emma Camden. Layla Walter 

continues her work as Vice President of the 

World Craft Council — Asia Pacific Region — 

South Pacific. Walter is on the board of 

WCC Australia and connects with wide 

audiences through Mahi ā Ringa, Craft 

New Zealand Aotearoa. 

The intensive tangle of challenges and 

opportunities in both countries over 

the past two years of the COVID-19 

pandemic prompted many glass artists to 

question ‘what really matters’. Many were 

rethinking creative approaches to their 

practices. Harriet Shwarzrock, for example, 

has increasingly been embracing a more 

speculative enquiry, and Matthew Curtis’ 

new works reveal a more meditative approach 

to his mathematical precision of form. Brian 

Hirst is “flat out making decanters without 

any assistant, like back in the early days of 

the ‘70s and ‘80s”, and Scott Chaseling has 

re-focussed on the issues of environmental 

impact of glass production and waste. 

Generally, we are experimenting more 

and are seeing more glass exhibited in 

contemporary galleries and museums. 

The ideas of cross-disciplinarity, 

sustainability and the reimagined potential 

of this incredibly versatile material have 

made steady inroads into teaching 

institutions, workshops and studios. It will 

take some time to see how this new thinking 

and working will shape the future of 

contemporary studio glass in Australia and 

New Zealand. For now, the process and 

glass-making skills remain of paramount 

importance to both established and emerging 

practitioners and equally significantly, to 

their collectors. 

Eva Czernis-Ryl 

February 2022 

Acknowledgements 

The author is indebted to artists, gallerists 

and curators who have provided invaluable 

information, in particular Justine Olsen for 

her in-depth insights on the New Zealand 

scene, and Kate Baker, Clare Belfrage, 

Gabriella Bisetto, Lisa Cahill, Christine 

Cathie, Scott Chaseling, Cobi Cockburn, 

Matthew Curtis, Nadège Desgenetez, Mel 

Douglas, Kathy Elliott, Mark Elliott, Tim 

Edwards, Aimee Frodsham, Anna Grigson, 

Jeff Hamilton, Brian Hirst, Naomi Hunter, 

Laurel Kohut, Warren Langley, Andrew 

Lavery, Jessica Loughlin, Mandi King, 

Jenni Kemarre Martiniello, Tom Moore, 

NOT, Brian Parkes, Kirstie Rea, Harriet 

Schwarzrock, Emma Varga and 

Ayano Yoshizumi. 

Mike Crawford, Kawau, 2021 

Image Courtesy of Masterworks Gallery 

40

Emerging Category Finalists

Bronte Cormican-Jones 

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. 

Through tunnelling our focus, we erase 

the peripheral and centre our attention. 

Sightlines is a study of depth beyond 

boundaries, providing the viewer with a 

focal point for contemplation. Whilst neither 

landscape nor portraiture, both space and the 

self occupy a distance that is implied through 

tone and reflection. The work explores the 

material qualities of glass, playing with the 

way that glass can be both looked through 

and reflect a space back to the viewer. 

Sightlines invites motion and stillness from 

its audience. Interacting with the work, the 

active audience navigates shifting sightlines. 

Once stationary, the resulting tunnel-like 

effect draws the viewer into an illusionary 

portal. The surfaces of glass promote 

interaction with one’s own reflection as 

if looking into a lifesize mirror, holding its 

audience in a space of quietude and using 

reflection to frame the inevitable relationship 

between the body and its surroundings. 

The composition of colours and patterns in 

this work can be seen in nature around the 

world. The dusty, neutral colours are also 

iconic of the rural Australian landscape, 

and they reference the building blocks of 

urban structures: homes, businesses, walls, 

pathways. The frosted external texture of 

the internally shiny glass inspires a familiar 

feeling in the viewer which draws them 

towards calmness and contemplation. 

Sightlines, 2021 

cold-worked float glass, timber, 1350 x 800 x 1600 

Photo: Bronte Cormican-Jones and Remi Siciliano 

44

Rose-Mary Faulkner 

Rose-Mary Faulkner is an emerging glass 

artist based in Canberra. She completed a 

Bachelor of Visual Arts (Glass) at the 

Australian National University’s School of Art 

and Design (2016). She was a finalist in the 

Megalo International Print Prize, Canberra 

(2020); Klaus Moje Glass Award, Canberra 

Glassworks (2019); and Emerge, Bullseye 

Projects, Portland, USA (2018). She was 

awarded the National Emerging Art Glass 

Prize, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery (2018), 

which facilitated a 6-week intensive 

residency at Northlands Creative in Lybster, 

Scotland (2018). Faulkner is a regular 

exhibitor at Canberra Contemporary Art 

Space, including her first solo show PROFILE 

(2018), and Some things I am sure of with 

printmaker Siobhan O’Connor (2021). Her 

work has been exhibited in Australia, Berlin, 

Japan and the USA. Faulkner is currently a 

tenant at Canberra Glassworks and a 

sessional teacher at the ANU’s School of 

Art and Design Glass Workshop. 

Faulkner’s current work investigates ways 

to observe and experience the body, 

expressed visually through soft dappled 

imagery evocative of feeling and sensation. 

Faulkner engages methods of mapping and 

recording the female figure from the unique 

and subjective line of sight we have of 

ourselves, considering the role of the gaze 

and expressing a female perspective on the 

female form. Her work primarily explores 

decal imagery on glass, firstly photographing 

sections of the body and abstracting these 

images through digital manipulation. 

Transferring them to glass using decals, 

Faulkner then further manipulates the surface 

and form through multiple fusing and cold 

working. This expands the imagery beyond 

the original photograph, enabling Faulkner 

to utilize the specific materiality of glass to 

suggest bodily form. While Faulkner’s work 

primarily focuses on fused kiln forming, in 

2019 with the help of an Arts ACT grant she 

expanded her work to incorporate neon 

lighting, undertaking a mentorship with 

Richard Wheater. In her most recent work, 

Faulkner uses curved neon lines to highlight 

the shapes within the photographic image, 

as well as drawing the viewer’s eye in and 

along the piece, the warm curve adding an 

additional soft hue over the dappled imagery. 

46

Neon Study 1, 2020 

kiln-formed glass with decal imagery, neon tubing with argon mercury gas, 275 x 3 x 440 

Photo: David Paterson

Alexandra Hirst 

Alexandra Hirst is a South Australian based 

glass artist whose work spans glassblowing, 

glass casting and installation. While obtaining 

her Bachelor of Visual Arts (Sculpture) at 

University of New South Wales Art and 

Design, Hirst was exposed to glassblowing 

through an international exchange program 

at Alfred University in New York, USA (2013). 

She was instantly drawn to the complexity, 

materiality and the collaborative nature of 

glass craft. In 2019, Hirst completed her 

Masters in Glass at the Edinburgh College 

of Art in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she 

learned to incorporate digital technologies 

with traditional glassblowing and casting 

techniques. Following her studies, Hirst 

joined the JamFactory’s Associate Program 

in the Glass Studio (2020–2022), where 

she continues to grow her artistic practice. 

Hirst’s work is heavily inspired by the 

repetitive patterns and cycles of the natural 

world. The transparency and optical 

qualities of glass make it the perfect medium 

to explore these themes – whether through 

layered colourations, etchings, installations 

or 3D printed cast glass sculptures. Hirst was 

a finalist in the emerging artist category of the 

FUSE Glass Prize in 2020 with her 3D printed 

cast glass artwork Building Blocks (2018). 

For her series Fractals, Alexandra Hirst 

worked with her partner Eric Cross, a 

South Australia based Industrial Designer, 

to investigate the relationship between digital 

technology and material craftsmanship. The 

vase occupies a unique place in human history 

as a functional object and as a significant 

medium for exploring the material of glass. 

By informing the artistic process with digital 

technology and 3D printing, Hirst and Cross 

reimagined these familiar forms to explore 

the relationship between a virtual artefact 

and its physical manifestation. The apparent 

distortion and manipulation of negative 

space within each glass piece is a visual 

conversation about how digital technology 

and automation in manufacturing has 

altered our perception of crafted objects. 

Fractals, 2021 

3D printed cast glass, 280 x 190 x 170 

Photo: Pippy Mount 

48

Bronwyn Sargeson 

Bronwyn Sargeson is an artist who primarily 

works with glass. Raised in Canberra on 

Ngunnawal/Ngambri country, Bronwyn 

completed a Bachelor of Visual Art majoring 

in Glass (2021) at the Australian National 

University’s School of Art and Design. 

Sargeson was the recipient of multiple 

Emerging Artist Support Scheme Awards 

in 2021, including a residency at the Canberra 

Glassworks. She has completed workshops 

by leading artists within the field in Canberra 

and Adelaide and currently lives and works 

in Canberra. Sargeson regularly assists local, 

national and international artists of a high 

calibre and is part of the Exhibition Install 

and Registration teams at the National 

Gallery of Australia. 

Reimagining medical procedures, 

interventions, and associated apparatus, 

Bronwyn Sargeson’s work seeks to 

transform the experiences of a wounded 

body into moments of wonder and playful 

exploration. Glassblowing is a method that 

allows the artist to be present in the moment 

of transformation and, through active 

engagement with the material, seeks to 

intervene in the same way medical procedures 

are performed on the human body. Drawing 

together amorphic forms conceived through 

breath, motion, and manipulation, glass is 

interrupted, pierced, distorted, held, or 

encased. When encountering these 

works, the viewer witnesses the careful 

reconstruction of symbiosis between the 

body and the external components it is 

dependent upon. Challenging notions of 

beauty often associated with glass, these 

installations capture the dissonance 

between distress and awe, between the 

body as personal or medical, seeking to 

realise the potential for transformation in 

these moments of pain. 

Circularene, 2022 

blown + cold worked glass, synthetic cord, flocking powder 

600 x 200 x 280 

Photo: Brenton McGeachie 

50

Michelle Stewart 

Michelle Stewart completed a Bachelor of 

Fine Art (Gold and Silversmithing) at RMIT 

University (Hons) (2017) after gaining an 

Advanced Diploma in Engineering (Jewellery) 

at Melbourne Polytechnic (2011). Her 

commitment to a minimal impact practice 

translates to a considered approach to 

making and materials. Her work, which 

includes installation, small sculpture and 

environmental art, employs recycled 

materials, primarily glass. Steward has 

been working with this medium since 2008 

and often uses the pâte de verre method 

of glassworking. Her work carries an 

environmental bias that explores notions 

of health, connectivity, symbiotic relationships 

and the future of humanity. Stewart was an 

artist-in-residence at Ayatana’s Biophilium 

in Ontario, Canada (2018). She received the 

Arte Laguna Sustainability and Art: Art Reuse 

Sustainability of Glass Award, Venice (2018). 

Her work has been exhibited in Australia, 

Germany, the Netherlands, Canada and 

the USA. 

The chain can imprison, exclude and shackle, 

but it can also connect, protect and bond. 

Each link can intertwine with others to form a 

strength in numbers. Chains are biological and 

chemical components of growth that can also 

be used in destructive ways. 

Ocean habitat, much like our terrestrial forest 

systems, is formed through a diverse and 

symbiotic connectivity of lifeforms. Under the 

cover of shimmering water, ocean ecosystems 

sequester and store carbon dioxide from the 

atmosphere. Kelp forests, Mangrove networks, 

tidal marshes and seagrasses can store vast 

amounts of carbon. Our ‘Old-Growth’ forest 

systems such as the Mountain Ash forests 

in the Central Victorian Highlands also store 

great amounts. 

These intricate ecosystems are being 

depleted through human activity–land 

clearing, logging, mining and other activities 

in pursuit of wealth. These chains represent 

the eternal connectivity of nature that will 

only come apart with human intervention. 

Made from post-consumer waste in an 

experimental take on traditional pâte de verre, 

each link is hand moulded and fired on a 

textured plaster cast. To be worn, the pieces 

fit as a collar that the wearer must always 

be conscious of. A gentle reminder of the 

precarity of nature and how our movements 

affect the balance. 

52

Carbon Chains (III & IV), 2022 

bottle glass, 300 x 700 x 10 

Photo: Fred Kroh

Jianzhen Wu 

Born in Dongguan, China, Jianzhen Wu 

(Shirley) is an emerging artist based in 

Adelaide. Wu completed a Master of Design 

(Contemporary Art) at the University of 

South Australia (2019). Previously she studied 

a Bachelor of Arts in Jewellery & Metalwork 

(Honours) at Middlesex University, England 

(2009–2013). Her practice encompasses 

jewellery and object design, glass sculpture 

and installation work. Wu utilises 

lampworking, moulding, casting, 

metalsmithing and stone carving techniques. 

Informed by her holistic training in Hong Kong 

(2015–2016), Wu’s creative process is a 

journey of healing and meditation. Wu was 

the recipient of the Canberra Glassworks 

Graduate in Residence (2021). She was a 

finalist for the MilanoVetro-35, Castello 

Sforzesco, Milan (2020); Vicki Torr 

Emerging Artist Prize, AUSGLASS (2020), 

and the National Emerging Art Glass Prize, 

Wagga Wagga Art Gallery (2020). 

Infusion is inspired by the relationship 

between science and naturopathy. The 

healing essence of eucalyptus is extracted 

through the distillation process and poured 

into the gestural, hollow form, created from 

laboratory test tubes. This allows it to diffuse 

into the air and our body through inhalation, 

completing the therapeutic cycle. 

54

Infusion, 2022 

flameworked borosilicate glass, Eucalyptus cneorifolia essential oil, sola wood 

(Aeschynomene aspera), cotton thread, reed and silicone, 150 x 1600 x 400 mm 

Photo: Michael Haines

Established Category Finalists

Nicholas Burridge 

Nicholas Burridge is a sculpture and 

installation artist who is based in Footscray 

on the traditional lands of the Woiwurrung 

and Boonwurrung people. He completed 

a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) at Monash 

University in 2016. Burridge’s recent research 

investigates the term ‘Terraforming’ and 

focuses attention on the ways that humans 

are re-engineering the earth. He explores this 

concept through the manipulation of natural 

materials into artificial ones, most recently 

through transforming the volcanic rock 

basalt into an artificial volcanic glass. 

Two cubes of the volcanic rock basalt sit 

side by side of a plinth. One of the 

dimensioned stones is an unchanged 

igneous rock, the other is an anthropic 

rock: a manufactured object. The anthropic 

rock has been subjected to 1400 degrees 

celsius in a kiln, melting and slumping under 

its own weight. The rock was then rapidly 

cooled and annealed transforming into an 

artificial volcanic glass. This anthropic rock 

is emblematic of the geologic age we live in, 

the Anthropocene a geologic epoch defined 

by humans. 

58

Igneous / Anthropic, 2022 

basalt, volcanic glass, 400 x 200 x 100 

Photo: the artist

Matthew Curtis 

Matthew Curtis is based in Queanbeyan, 

NSW at a home-studio where he and his 

partner Harriet Schwarzrock run a vibrant 

glassblowing studio and arts practice. 

As a visual artist with a material practice 

concerned with glass, Curtis is fascinated 

by the production of objects inspired by the 

minutia of architectural structures in nature. 

Having relished an informal apprenticeship 

in glassblowing whilst assisting at Denizen 

Glass in Sydney in the early 1990’s, Curtis 

has since exhibited extensively throughout 

Australia and regularly at international art 

fairs and exhibitions. Refining his eye for 

detail whilst expanding his material 

knowledge, Curtis has focused his practice 

on researching and experimenting 

unconventional approaches to extend his 

understanding of traditional techniques. 

Over the course of his career, Curtis has 

developed a rigorous approach to his work 

and his affinity, dexterity, and experience 

with manipulating glass is extensive. He is 

particularly interested in capturing a depth 

and complexity to the blown and cast glass 

components featured in his work, with the 

hues of transparent colours fading and 

gathering in intensity depending on the 

depth or delicate edge of the piece. In his 

most recent projects, Curtis has writ large 

his sculptures to create intimate details 

within generous and sophisticated enveloping 

forms, culminating in the illuminated public 

sculpture Field of Light (2019) in Canberra. 

In developing this body of work, Matthew 

Curtis’s keen eye for symmetry and 

mathematical precision has become 

peripheral, yielding a more meditative 

approach to the alignment of form. Working 

with a subtle and shifting palette of hues, 

Curtis references the traditional glassblowing 

technique of sommerso. Literally translated 

as ‘submerged’, the sommerso technique is 

used to create several layers of glass of 

different contrasting colours inside a single 

object to offer the illusion of immersed 

colours that lay one on top of another 

without mixing. The composition of these 

suspended fields of colour — veneers 

encasing the encompassed blown void — 

accentuates their individual boundaries 

and margins. Curtis’ focus on the coming 

together of these components is his reflection 

of how people, objects and ideas can yield to 

accommodate each other and harmoniously 

fit together. 

60

Margin, 2022 

blown tinted glass, carved, aluminium, 560 x 150 x 740 

Photo: Rob Little

Jess Dare 

Contemporary jeweller Jess Dare completed 

a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Jewellery) at the 

Adelaide Centre for the Arts, TAFE SA (2006). 

Dare has been practicing flameworking for 

over 17 years, having been taught by local 

and international glass artists. For Dare, glass 

now forms an integral part of her practice. 

She became a partner of the celebrated 

Gray Street Workshop in 2010. Dare has 

undertaken international residencies 

researching the floral culture in Bangkok, 

Thailand (2014) and Shanghai, China (2015). 

In 2016–2017, she worked closely with 

Professor Richard Johnson to create a 

permanent memorial in Sydney’s Martin 

Place symbolising the spontaneous sea of 

flowers laid by thousands of people following 

the December 2014 Martin Place siege in 

the Lindt Café. Dare exhibits nationally and 

internationally and is represented in major 

national collections including the National 

Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of 

Victoria, the Art Gallery of South Australia, 

and the National Art Glass Gallery. 

Collecting, collections, family, passing on, 

passing down, memory, loss. A collection 

of faded ivory glass plants beginning to 

wilt in vintage cardboard boxes; heirlooms 

passed down, similar to the way family 

treasures are gifted to the artist by her 

grandmother, in their original 

cardboard boxes. 

What began as direct references to 

endangered, critically endangered and 

extinct native Australian plants evolved 

though the making. Daily, the plants on 

Dare’s bench seemed to grow further from 

reality, more abstracted, perhaps as the 

pain, grief and loss was too hard to face, 

too unfathomable as the bushfires raged 

across Australia in 2019-20. 

Using elements and structures from her 

memory of plants Wattles, Acacias, 

Eucalyptus, and Grevilleas Dare began to 

draw on her lineage of domestic plant 

knowledge and her personal experience 

of years spent toiling in the garden. Plant 

knowledge and a deep respect for life, a 

gift from her grandparents, nurtured by 

her parents and hopefully passed on to 

her children. A fragile inheritance. 

62

Inheritance, 2020 

soft glass, cotton, foam, vintage box, copper, 900 x 400 x 50 


Mel Douglas 

Mel Douglas has worked as an independent 

studio artist since graduating from the 

Canberra School of Art, Australian National 

University in 2000, where she has also served 

as a lecturer. In early 2020, Douglas received 

her PhD based on research she carried out 

at the ANU’s Glass Workshop and at Bullseye 

Glass in Portland, USA. In addition to winning 

the Tom Malone Prize (2020), a prestigious 

award through which a work is acquired each 

year into the collection of the National Gallery 

of Western Australia, Douglas has received 

several major awards including the Ranamok 

Glass Prize (2002) and the International 

Young Glass Award (2007) from the Ebeltolft 

Museum of Glass, Denmark. In 2019, Douglas’ 

work was the inaugural acquisition for the 

National Gallery of Australia’s Robert and 

Eugenie Bell Decorative Arts and Design 

Fund. Her work is held in private collections 

and public institutions internationally, 

including the Corning Museum of Glass, 

New York, USA, Cincinnati Art Museum, 

USA, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, 

USA, Ebeltoft Museum of Glass, Denmark, 

Powerhouse Museum, Sydney and National 

Gallery of Australia, Canberra. 

In her glass practice, Mel Douglas explores 

the potential, versatility and flexibility of 

glass as a material for drawing. While objects 

and drawings are often thought of as two 

separate entities, Douglas’ work explores 

and interweaves the creative possibilities 

of this liminal space where the form is not 

just a support for drawing, but a 

three-dimensional drawing itself. Using 

the unique material qualities and the rich 

potential of mark-making on and with 

glass, Douglas employs line as a way 

to inform, define and enable 

three-dimensional space. 

Innerspace, 2022 

framed glass drawing, engraved, 920 x 20 x 1050 

Photo: David Patterson 

64

Liam Fleming 

Liam Fleming is a Tarntanya (Adelaide) 

based glassblower, artist and designer with 

an active practice of over ten years. He is an 

Alumni of the University of South Australia’s 

visual arts program (2011) and JamFactory’s 

prestigious Associate Program in the Glass 

Studio (2013), where he has served as the 

Production Manager since 2015. Fleming has 

completed a number of residencies around 

the world, including in Murano, Italy and 

Oaxaca, Mexico, and nationally at Canberra 

Glassworks. Exhibiting both nationally and 

internationally, his works are held in both 

private and public collections. Fleming is 

the current recipient of the Guildhouse 

Fellowship, which is supported by Guildhouse, 

the Art Gallery of South Australia and the 

James and Diana Ramsay Foundation. 

Process is a central narrative of Liam 

Fleming’s Composition series. He first 

builds architectural structures from 

arranged, mould-blown vessels before 

relinquishing control to the kiln. These 

structures are fused together and then 

allowed to slump, warp and collapse under 

their own weight and pressure — thereby 

autonomously finding their final form. 

A silk finish is achieved through surface 

manipulation, carving and multiple-firings. 

Despite employing processes of great 

precision and a strong reference to 

production techniques, Fleming’s works 

present as relaxed, reclining sculptures 

that speak to a perfect balance between 

control and chaos. 

66

Composition #4 In B, 2022 

glass, 400 x 330 x 270 

Photo: Sean Fennessy

Hannah Gason 

Originally from Victoria, Hannah Gason 

moved to Canberra to work as a cartographer. 

After an introduction to glass through a 

number of workshops, Gason completed a 

Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours) at the 

Australian National University School of 

Art and Design (2015), where she won a 

University Medal. Reflecting her interest in 

mapping, Gason’s work explores depth, 

light and perspective. Through the use of 

kiln forming processes, she creates works 

that explore the illusion of depth through 

the careful placement of glass tiles with their 

shifting tones. Her works play with reception 

and fluidity to suggest rhythm and a 

constantly moving, changing surface. 

Gason has travelled widely as an artist and 

has been an artist in residence, teaching 

assistant and visiting artist at the Bullseye 

Glass Company, Portland, USA; Berlin Glas, 

Berlin, Germany; Corning Museum of Glass, 

New York, USA and North Lands Creative 

Glass, Lybster, Scotland. Working from her 

studio at the Canberra Glassworks, Gason 

has exhibited nationally and internationally 

with work housed in the Australian 

Parliament House Art Collection, the 

Australian National Art Glass Collection 

and the ANU Art Collection. 

Hannah Gason’s art practice is an exploration 

of the subtle changes and rhythms of the 

everyday, such as gradual shifts in light, 

contrasting colours and repeating patterns. 

Throughout her works, there is repetition, 

suggesting a constantly moving, changing 

surface. Her work Brushed captures, 

modulates and grades the available light 

through the arrangement of layered glass 

fragments. The wall-mounted panels layer 

translucent colour and opaque white glass, 

reorganising the light they absorb. The use 

of fragments combined with shifting colours 

suggest the subtle changes we experience 

through daily life. Brushed is made up of 

small tiles arranged to form the large plane. 

The abstract patterns play with repetition 

and disruption through the placement of 

tiles in shifting tones of white and yellow. 

The varying intensity, brightness and opacity 

of the whites over the more muted tones of 

yellow, result in an illusion of depth and 

movement. The still, hard object is a dynamic 

plane, the smaller components seeming to 

slide back and forth over each other in a 

constant shuffle. 

68

Brushed, 2020 

kilnformed glass, 1120 x 20 x 550 

Photo: Greg Piper

Tom Moore 

Tom Moore is an Adelaide based glass 

artist. Born in Canberra, Moore graduated 

from the Canberra School of Art at the 

Australian National University in 1994 and 

trained in production techniques at 

JamFactory until 1997, after which he 

served as the Glass Studio’s Production 

Manager for 15 years. In 2019, Moore 

completed a practice-led PhD at the 

University of South Australia. Moore divides 

his time between working within the hot 

glass community at JamFactory’s Glass 

Studio, from his own home studio and in 

his role as an Adjunct Research Fellow at 

the University of South Australia, where he 

undertakes practical investigations in glass 

focusing on hybrid life forms, humour and 

the Anthropocene. While Moore’s work 

maintains strong links with a lineage of 

ancient craft, it has also been featured 

in high-profile surveys of Australian 

contemporary art and is the focus of 

the nationally touring solo exhibition 

JamFactory Icon Tom Moore: 

Abundant Wonder. 

I am expanding upon the venerable ancient 

tradition of making comical representational 

vessels, in this case figurative bottle/bodies 

with heads that are removable stoppers. The 

visual joke is enhanced in these characters 

by the addition of faces on both bottle and 

stopper so they can be perceived as ‘right 

way up’ or as standing on their enormous 

heads. These funny antipodeans walk a fine 

line between eccentricity and technical rigour. 

The works display the serious dedication 

that is necessary to learn and adapt the 

astounding practices for making intricately 

patterned Venetian cane. The integration 

of finely detailed lamp-work has been 

carefully planned and faithfully, fortuitously 

accomplished! 

These objects are meant to be delightful, 

but my reason for making them is more 

than just fun. I believe there are great 

possibilities for profundity in absurdity. 

I playfully combine human, plant and 

animal features in the hope of bamboozling 

conventions of representation and perception. 

The ensuing characters are intended to 

represent ecological ambassadors, reminding 

us of our deep interconnections within 

the biological community. 

70

Katnest Evergreen & The Party Wizard, 2021 

glass, silver leaf , 250 x 210 x 430 / 240 x 210 x 480 


Jason Sims 

Jason Sims works in the realm of 

perceptual art. He creates walls works, 

free-standing sculptures, large-scale 

installations and public artworks that create 

simple illusions of space and form. Since 

graduating with a Bachelor of Visual Arts 

(Honours) from the University of South 

Australia (2006), Sims has exhibited across 

Australia, Hong Kong, the USA, the UK and 

Europe. His work is held in public and private 

collections, including Artbank, the Art 

Gallery of Western Australia and Gippsland 

Art Gallery. He won the People’s Choice 

Award in the Hobart Art Prize (2014) and 

The Advertiser’s Contemporary Art Prize 

(2015) as part of the South Australian Living 

Artists Festival (SALA). Sims presented a 

significant body of new work as part of The 

Collections Project at the AGSA (2015). He 

held his first solo show in the USA, Spatial 

Acuity, Madison Gallery, Solana Beach, 

USA (2018) and produced a large-scale 

installation for a major survey of Australian 

art at the Art Gallery of Ballarat (2018). 

Sims is represented by MARS Gallery in Melbourne; 

HOFA Gallery in London, UK, Palm Beach, USA and 

Mykonos, Greece; and ARTITLED Contemporary in 

Amsterdam, Netherlands. 

Defined simply through the use of contrasting 

colours, On the Horizon presents an imagined 

landscape. Transitioning in ever-changing 

combinations, the intensity and tone of 

the work changes subtly so as to be almost 

imperceptible until at its most extreme. 

Simultaneous contrast further confounds 

the senses. The horizon, a simple but 

evocative symbol that governs perspective, 

and the soft, seductive quality of the light, 

implies depth and creates a sense of space. 

This sense of space and the work’s 

luminosity is intended to inspire a visceral 

response, playing with perception and 

inviting contemplation. 

As an artist, Sims’s interest has always 

been in perspective and the representation 

of space. It is an interesting human quality 

that in our most contemplative moments 

we seek space, we seek physical space, for 

its ability to induce calm and inspire optimism. 

On the Horizon is intended to emulate this 

space and the eternal found in nature. There 

is a certainty about the horizon. At any time, 

if you could remove everything in your field 

of vision, there it would be, ever-present and 

unwavering. On the Horizon is an edition of 

3 and intended to be viewed in low-lighting. 

72

On The Horizon, 2020 

glass, powder coated steel, aluminium, LED lights and electronics, 1060 x 90 x 1060 

Photo: Pippy Mount

Drew Spangenberg 

Drew Spangenberg completed a Bachelor 

of Visual Art (Glass) at the University of 

South Australia (2013) before undertaking 

the Associate Training Program at 

JamFactory (2014–2015). Spangenberg 

creates stand-alone pieces with practical 

possibilities. His first solo exhibition Equipoise, 

Worth Gallery, Adelaide (2019), included 

lighting, large bottles and goblets. As a 

musician, he feels a connection between 

playing music and the rhythm and 

coordination required in the glass blowing 

process. He arranges glass vessels into 

complementary compositions as he would 

a piece of music. Spangenberg was the 

recipient of the Australian Design Institute 

Glass Award (2014). He was short-listed 

for the Klaus Moje Glass Award (2019) and 

Drink, Dine, Design Award (2015) 

Spangenberg’s work explores the relationship 

between shape and colour using traditional 

glass blowing techniques. Influenced by a 

minimalist aesthetic he works with a simple 

colour palette to showcase the curved 

lines which intersect at sharp corners. 

Spangenberg has pushed his skills as a 

glass blower in creating these deceptively 

intricate forms. Glass, as a medium, naturally 

curves and softens in sharp areas when 

heated, making clean and simple lines a 

challenge to achieve. Curvilinear Ensemble 

aims to have areas of soft curves with harsh 

corners that juxtapose and compliment in 

a harmonious composition. Spangenberg’s 

background as a musician influences the 

way he approaches his artistic practice. In 

creating a musical composition, he thinks 

of how the many parts work together to 

create a complete piece. These objects are 

made as an ensemble rather than individuals, 

with the colours and shapes thoughtfully 

chosen to play together in harmony. 

74

Curvilinear Ensemble, 2022 

blown glass, 900 x 500 x 500 

Photo: Pippy Mount

Alex Valero 

Alex Valero studied a Bachelor of Visual Arts 

(Glass) at the University of South Australia. 

He went on to further his skills in glassblowing 

as a JamFactory Glass Studio Associate 

(2013–2014). Through his glass practice, 

Valero grapples with ideas at the frontier of 

philosophy. His sculptural glass challenges 

craft tradition, and seeks to discover new 

technologies and aesthetic possibilities for 

the material. Valero’s work reflects his 

curiosity about the universe and humanity’s 

place within it. Valero was the inaugural 

ecipient of the FUSE Glass Artist Residency 

(2020) resulting in the major solo exhibition, 

Alex Valero: The Study of the Sky, at Carrick 

Hill, Adelaide (2021). He was the winner of 

the FUSE Glass Prize Emerging Artist 

Category (2016). 

There are no catastrophes that loom 

before us which cannot be avoided. 

The pillars stand in a hopeful future where 

human cooperation endures for aeons. 

76

Megaannum Conference, 2021 

blown and coldworked glass, 100 x 100 x 130-220 


Janice Vitkovsky 

Janice Vitkovsky began her studies at the 

University of South Australia, attaining a 

Bachelor of Applied Arts (Glass and Ceramics) 

(1999). She went on to complete the Associate 

Program at JamFactory’s Glass Studio (2001) 

and a Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours) (Glass) 

at the Australian National University (2005). 

Vitkovsky’s artwork focuses on conveying 

a sense of impermanence, constructing 

intricate patterns to form ambiguous 

landscapes in glass. Exploring the historic 

murrine technique to compose detailed 

pattern, her work combines both hot and 

cold glass processes while pursuing new 

applied techniques with the medium. Her 

practice includes teaching, participating in 

national and international artist residency 

programs, and assisting other artists. 

Vitkovsky’s work has been acquired for 

many important public and private 

collections worldwide, and has been 

included in exhibitions in Australia, Asia, 

Germany and the USA. 

Formation focusses on expressing a sense 

of motion and impermanence, presenting 

a view of navigation through time and 

space as a fluid dimension. By working 

with a combination of techniques to create 

a complex landscape, Vitkovsky is looking 

at 2 and 3 dimensional spaces, how they 

interrelate, and highlighting connections 

between the complexities that exist in the 

meeting and shifting of perceptions, how 

action shapes thought, how we view our 

world through the lens of the past, 

present and future. 

Formation offers an immersive interaction 

between the viewer and object. Moving 

around the work, audiences can play with 

multiple perceptions within a singular 

artwork, to discover new perspectives, 

affording the possibility of approaching 

ideas from a different angle. 

78

Formation, 2022 

glass, 580 x 15 x 530 

Photo: Pippy Mount

Kathryn Wightman 

Kathryn Wightman began working with glass 

as a student at the University of Sunderland, 

England, where she obtained a Bachelor of 

Art (Glass and Ceramics) (2000), followed 

by a Master of Arts (Glass) (2005). In 2006, 

Wightman was awarded a Craft Council 

placement to assist in establishing a creative 

practice. This led to PhD research undertaken 

at the University of Sunderland (2012), funded 

by the Arts Humanities Research Council, UK, 

focusing on the integration of glassmaking 

and printmaking processes. Since completing 

research, Wightman has undertaken work 

as a visiting lecturer at the University of 

Sunderland and has also worked as a 

glassmaker at the National Glass Centre, 

Sunderland. In 2012, Wightman relocated to 

New Zealand to become a glass lecturer at 

the Wanganui Glass School. Since relocating 

to New Zealand, she has won the Academic 

Gold Award at the Emerge Glass Prize (2014), 

the Ranamok Glass Prize (2014), the Young 

Glass Kvadrat Prize (2017) and the Whanganui 

Arts Review (2018). Previously a finalist in the 

FUSE Glass Prize 2016, 2018 and 2020, her 

work has also been selected for New Glass 

Review 33, 37 and 38. Wightman delivers 

workshops around the world and lectures in 

multiple creative areas across the University 

College of Learning Whanganui School of 

Creative Industries. 

Kathryn Wightman’s work can be described 

as an interpretation of human experience 

expressed through glass and printed image. 

The Space In-Between explores current 

narratives surrounding how information 

and media are utilised today to fuel the 

varying perspectives within the community, 

particularly during times of uncertainty. 

The pattern recalls the familiar and reassuring 

designs of vintage Victorian wallpaper and 

intends to evoke feelings of security. 

However, there is a sinister undertone 

represented through the shift in colour 

to green — a colour significant to the 

arsenic-bearing pigments prevalent in the 

19th Century home. The printed glass image 

transitions incrementally, with the patterning 

switching slowly from the front to the back 

of the glass as it ascends around the circular 

form. It is only possible to see the other side 

by passing through the space in-between. 

80

The Space In-Between, 2022 

glass, foamed pvc, steel, 1500 x 1500 x 1400 

Photo: the artist

First Published in Adelaide, Australia in 2022. 

Published to coincide with the exhibition of 

finalists’ works for the 2022 FUSE Glass 

Prize, shown at JamFactory, Adelaide from 

13 May to 3 July, Canberra Glassworks, Kingston 

from 24 August to 25 September and Australian 

Design Centre, Sydney from 7 October to 

16 November. 

Published by JamFactory 

19 Morphett Street, Adelaide SA 5000 

jamfactory.com.au 

Copyright for texts in this publication is held by 

JamFactory and the authors. Copyright on all 

works of art featured belongs to the individual 

artists. All images, unless otherwise credited, 

are courtesy of the artists. Copyright for 

photographic images is held by the individual 

photographers as acknowledged. 

ISBN 978-0-6483290-5-3 

All measurements have been given length 

before width before height or height by diameter 

and have been rounded to the nearest millimetre. 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication 

may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system 

or transmitted in any form or by any means 

without the prior permission in writing from 

the publisher. Please forward all enquiries to 

contact@jamfactory.com.au 

© JamFactory, 2022 

82

Jianzhen Wu, Infusion (detail), 2022 

Photo: Michael Haines

JamFactory supports and promotes outstanding 

contemporary craft and design through its widely 

acclaimed studios, galleries and shops. A unique 

not-for-profit organisation located in the 

Adelaide city centre and Seppeltsfield in the 

Barossa. JamFactory is supported by the South 

Australian Government and recognised both 

nationally and internationally as a centre 

for excellence. 

JamFactory acknowledges the support of the 

South Australian Government through the 

Department of Innovation and Skills and the 

assistance of the Visual Arts and Crafts Strategy, 

an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory 

Governments. JamFactory’s Exhibitions Program 

is also assisted by the Australian Government 

through the Australia Council. 

JamFactory gratefully acknowledges the 

generous donors who have made the 2022 

FUSE Glass Prize possible; Jim Carreker and 

Helen Carreker, Pamela Wall OAM and 

Ian Wall AM, the David & Dulcie Henshall 

Foundation, David McKee AM and Pam McKee, 

the Hon Diana Laidlaw AM, Susan Armitage, 

Sonia Laidlaw, Trina Ross, Maia Ambegaokar 

and Joshua Bishop. 

JamFactory also acknowledges the generosity 

of the supporting sponsors and presenting 

partners for the 2022 FUSE Glass Prize. 

84

FUSE Glass Prize 2022 Catalogue

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