FUSE Glass Artist Residency

GLASS ARTIST RESIDENCY
Marcel Hoogstad Hay: Sublime Scales
4 November 2023 - 28 January 2024
Wall Gallery, Carrick Hill

Contents
Introduction 2
Donors 5
Sublime Scales 7
Then the squashed and densified and 10
compressed and rounded mirroring
of Marcel’s work pings
Presenters 23
Credits 24

Introduction
JamFactory and Carrick Hill are proud
to present the 2023 FUSE Glass Artist
Residency Exhibition.
Awarded biennially in alternate years to
the FUSE Glass Prize, the FUSE Glass Artist
Residency aims to create significant
opportunities for established, mid-career
artists working in glass. The residency at
JamFactory in Adelaide enables a selected
artist to work with skilled assistants, take risks
and experiment with the development of new
work using or incorporating hot blown glass.
Adelaide-based artist Marcel Hoogstad Hay
was selected from a competitive field of
applicants as the 2023 recipient of the FUSE
Glass Artist Residency and we are grateful
to the three judges who assessed the
applications - venerated South Australian
glass artist Clare Belfrage, the Head of
JamFactory’s Glass Studio Kristel Britcher
and Carrick Hill Board Member Jeff Mincham.
Hoogstad Hay has spent over 10 years
working with glass. He graduated from the
ANU School of Art and Design, Canberra in
2012 and completed the Associate Program
at JamFactory in 2014. He was a finalist in
the FUSE Glass Prize in 2020 and the
Tom Malone Prize in 2021 and 2022.
As a local artist, Hoogstad Hay chose to
undertake his residency over two intense
blocks in June and July 2023. New work
developed through the residency is the focus
of this solo exhibition presented in the Wall
Gallery at Carrick Hill from 4 November 2023
to 28 January 2024.
The FUSE Glass Artist Residency has been
developed as an extension of the successful
FUSE Glass Prize. It provides a platform to
encourage artists residing in Australia or
New Zealand 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. The biennial
prize, which was established by JamFactory
in 2016, is a juried, non-acquisitive, $20,000
cash prize for established artists. An
additional prize – the David Henshall
Emerging Artist Prize, valued at $10,000,
is awarded to an emerging glass artist.
fuseglassprize.com
2

Vanishing Points, 2023
blown and mirrored glass. Photo: Pippy Mount

Donors
Thank you to our donors.
The FUSE Glass Prize and Residency
program is a 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 committed glass
art collectors Jim and Helen Carreker and
JamFactory. The FUSE Glass Prize launched
in 2016 and was funded then, as it is now,
predominantly 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 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 throughout this decade.
With this latest commitment, the Carrekers’
personal philanthropic support of FUSE
remains the most significant private support
in JamFactory’s history.
The FUSE Glass Artist Residency Exhibition
at Carrick Hill has once again been made
possible by the additional generosity of
Pamela Wall OAM and Ian Wall AM
(1931 - 2022) who have been committed
and long-term supporters of Carrick Hill.
The new purpose-built exhibition space,
in which this exhibition is presented, was
named the Wall Gallery in their honour.
The FUSE Glass Prize is supported by the
following donors; Jim and Helen Carreker,
the Hon Diana Laidlaw AM, David McKee AO
and Pam McKee, the David & Dulcie Henshall
Foundation, Pamela Wall OAM and Ian Wall
AM (1931 - 2022), Susan Armitage,
Sonia Laidlaw and Maia Ambegaokar
and Joshua Bishop.
Marcel at work in the Glass Studio
Photo: Connor Patterson
5

Sublime Scales
Marcel Hoogstad Hay is interested in
the ways people perceive the world; our
perceptions of space, time and matter,
and how these preconceived notions
relate to the way things appear when
viewed at different scales. He is fascinated
by the way spacetime is influenced by the
physical forces in the universe and, using
the material and optical qualities of
glass, he explores this idea through the
distortion of image, pattern and form.
For this exhibition Sublime Scales,
Hoogstad Hay has created a body of work
that addresses how we situate ourselves
in the world as we move through it.
Working with traditional Venetian glass
cane techniques he creates complex,
gestural patterns. These lines of cane
allude to paths traversed and how
physical forces disrupt and distort these
paths. They reference the nature of things
when viewed at a quantum scale, but also
topography and how we might picture
ourselves moving across the Earth’s
surface. It is in the nature of these
often unseen scales, the unfathomability
of the astronomical and the complexity
of the quantum, that Hoogstad Hay finds
a sense of awe. Through these works he
explores perceptual elements, breaking
down our established understanding of
the physical world. The reflective surfaces
and absorbing interiors of these objects
invite the viewer to engage with the work,
and to contemplate the self and our place
in the universe.
Wine Dark Sea II, 2023
blown and mirrored glass, acrylic paint. Photo: Pippy Mount
7

Then the squashed
and densified and
compressed and
rounded mirroring of
Marcel’s work pings
by Robert Cook
As usual I start to type and find I can’t
read my notes. Tiny little spider writing. In
mechanical pencil. Lines connecting half
sentences. They are not ‘helpful’. None of it is
‘helpful’. I wonder, though: were they meant to
be? If I take it that there is an unconscious, I
could interpret myself as fashioning a teasing
tangle of responses and echoes to Marcel’s
words and work that undoes my capacity to
be a transparent medium. Of course, I hate
this about myself. The insertion thing. My
galumphing presence; I so want to overcome
my grotesque need to be visible, or audible,
whatever it is. Weirdly though, it’s not just
manners. Isn’t there a sneaky little trajectory
that is in fact a not-so-little not-so-sneaky
trajectory of dudes being hidden and
occupying stances of neutrality that aren’t
that? That guide and guard and shape and
shade so that their power (look how I
distance myself here, their) is hidden,
naturalised. Neutralised in a way that’s
anything but.
Previous page: Cosmic Wiggle Cluster, 2023
blown and mirrored glass, acrylic paint. Photo: Pippy Mount
Trace No. 6, 2023
blown and mirrored glass. Photo: Pippy Mount
10

And when it’s exposed as kind of being
basically The Structure there is the sudden
shame of the sprung voyeur. The shame of
ideology unmasked as that, as if the stakes
were not declared. Which they weren’t.
And yeah, most of this is then instantly
repressed: ‘No, no that wasn’t happening!’
That’s how this structure functions.
The veracity of this line is supported by all
those analyses of this or that prison/
institutional/social formation whereby folk
modify their behaviours when visible as they
pull the look (of the authority, the jailor, the
dad, the cop, the bank) ‘inside’. All of which is
inherently relational which is why there were/
are centuries of those artists of the mirror
(Velasquez, Dan Graham et al.) who dealt and
deal with what it is to get caught up in the
binds of being a viewer and a viewed, being
in and out of the mechanism, split, splitting,
fractured, lost, corrupted, corrupting,
complicit. We’re wary of these forces even
if its in our bodies and reflex behaviours.
Just note the slip of gaffer tape over your
computer camera and tell me it’s not as
true today as it was in 1656.
Which is, yes, an admittedly super longwinded
way of saying that Marcel’s medium,
glass, even when not mirrored, is totally
implicated in all this stuff. I mean, it’s no
leap at all from the ground glass in Jimmy
Stewart’s telescope in Rear Window to the
great sheets that form the surfaces of the
skyscrapers that create an infinite sky above
us bouncing away in a non-transcendental
corporatised sublime. These notions and
experiences and tensions are all rising and
bubbling and mutating in what Marcel’s been
doing over the last two years or so; and with
increased focus and scale thanks to the FUSE
Residency that has allowed him to go larger
and more complex and draw on the talents of
those around him.
Which is another kind of relationality, and it’s
my sense his work carries that as much as it
carries itself as a series of propositions around
framing our positions in the world. What I
mean by that is that there is a human scale at
one end, whereby the limits of the object are
defined by the scale of the studio, the skills of
the people around, those things, and a way
more micro and macro level that starts to get
positively vertiginous. See, at that level he’s
operating around some pretty heady science
stuff emanating from Carlo Rovelli notions
that time doesn’t exist only space, and that
the universe is a kind of malleable web, that
is stretchable, and that within this we have
a whole related thing about absorption
and reflection, these forces that make
black holes and the like.
You can see how this relates to my preamble
while being another waaaaay big step
outwards from that. His mirrored forms pull
us into this zone where we’re caught by our
distorted reflection, even if this is partial (any
maybe especially so as it pulses us away
from our sense of cohesive form) and what’s
interesting is that he stages this in a manner
Trace No. 5, 2023
blown and mirrored glass. Photo: Pippy Mount
13

that is neither clinical and existentially chilling
nor domesticating and reassuring. Instead,
he remains light and floatingly, teasingly
propositional. From this position, his balance
of cane work motifs and mirrored surfaces
and shapes - both poised and off kilter - offers
a rich framework to speculate on how objects
exist, how earth exists, how both exist in such
a way as to hold us in a place long enough
for us to even begin to get all hung up who
is looking at whom, what is looking at whom.
Thankfully it doesn’t make any ‘oh human
concerns are so petty’ statement but rather
acts out the entanglement of the layers of
scale and reality that we reside within (layers
that those like Lacan have always held in mind
too, of course…the Symbolic pitched ‘against’
the Real).
Yet as well as acting all these layers out,
Marcel insists (in a measured way) that he
diagrams it. Damn, I really like this! We can
see that their diagrammatic basis keeps them
ultimately ‘free’, not to be aesthetic objects
only, or to be symbols or analogies either. It
helps them enter the imaginative gravitational
folds of the mind (does this exist, I’m riffing
here!) where they can function as ideas and
perspectives, tentative theories perhaps too.
One of which, maybe, is the idea of multiple
vanishing points. If perspective is built (in
part) on this notion, a single point, vanishing
point, and its stitching of a viewer and a site
in more or less one place, then the squashed
and densified and compressed and rounded
mirroring of Marcel’s works pings this off in all
kinds of other vanishing points such that we
might imagine ourselves win an endlessly
Singularity, 2023
blown and mirrored glass, acrylic paint. Photo: Pippy Mount
14

Marcel at work in the Glass Studio
Photo: Connor Patterson
Traverse No. 5, 2023
blown and mirrored glass. Photo: Pippy Mount

mutating, morphing realm of lines and
pathways, behind and around us, that hints
at other places we can be viewed from,
and see ourselves from, at which point we
might experience a kind of derealization
of self, and get to the idea of the self itself
as a makeshift diagram we’re endlessly
geolocating and not in a neutral sense.
(Echoes of Lacan’s gaze here obviously.)
Which means I think Marcel is properly
experimenting here. He’s running out
networks that test and probe, part hard
science part soft science while making us
aware of the extremely loaded nature of
those terms and how the meaning we make
is always a mapping over something, and an
imaginative experience and exercise, and that
a vanishing point is also a black hole, one that
is many, multiplying, so we can feel it nagging
our too visible selves, making us hold onto
the ground for balance as the earth spins
us around and some law of physics starts
tugging at our glasses and hats and hairpiece
as we get sucked as a globular whole with
all our friends and non-friends and well
everything damned else into an oblivion
that might be another future. Who the hell
knows. Certainly not me. I even can’t read
my own notes.
Robert Cook
Curator of 20th Century Art,
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth.
Previous Page: Trace/Traverse, 2023
blown and mirrored glass. Photo: Pippy Mount
Into the Void, 2023
blown and mirrored glass. Photo: Pippy Mount
20

Wine Dark Sea I, 2023
blown and mirrored glass, acrylic paint. Photo: Pippy Mount

Presenters
JamFactory
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 shops, exhibitions, public
programs and touring exhibitions promote
the best Australian craft and design talent.
All purchases made from JamFactory directly
support our training and exhibition program.
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.
Carrick Hill
Carrick Hill is a significant South Australian
cultural icon and tourism attraction. It
comprises a major heritage building, being
the previous home of Sir Edward and Lady
Ursula Hayward, now an exquisite house
museum displaying an internationally
significant art and furniture collection.
The house sits within a 40 hectare estate,
part landscaped and part native bushland;
with original subsidiary buildings such as
stables and eclectic sculptures scattered
throughout the rambling grounds and
gardens; The property is located close to
the city of Adelaide, in the Adelaide foothills,
with spectacular views stretching to Gulf
St Vincent.
Carrick Hill is fortunate to be one of the
few period homes in Australia to survive
with its original contents almost completely
intact and its grounds undiminished. The
collection contains many significant
architectural and decorative glass objects
including items from Tiffany and Lalique.
In 2021 a new exhibition space – the Wall
Gallery – was created in the loft of the main
house as part of major renovations.
23

First Published in Adelaide, Australia in 2023.
Published to coincide with the 2023
FUSE Glass Artist Residency Exhibition,
Marcel Hoogstad Hay: Sublime Scales, shown
at the Wall Gallery, Carrick Hill, Adelaide from
4 November 2023 - 28 January 2024.
Published by JamFactory, 19 Morphett Street,
Adelaide SA 5000
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, 2023
Copyright for texts in this publication is held by
JamFactory and the authors. Copyright on all
works of art featured belongs to the individual
artist. All images, unless otherwise credited,
are courtesy of the artists. Copyright for
photographic images is held by the individual
photographers as acknowledged.
Exhibition Curator: Rebecca Freezer
Essay: Robert Cook
Catalogue Designer: Sophie Guiney
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 Arts South
Australia 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 of the FUSE Glass Program;
Jim and Helen Carreker and Ian Wall AM
(1931 - 2022) and Pamela Wall OAM, David &
Dulcie Henshall Foundation, David McKee AO
and Pam McKee, Diana Laidlaw AM,
Maia Ambegaokar and Joshua Bishop,
Sonia Laidlaw and Susan Armitage.
JamFactory also acknowledges the generosity
of the supporting sponsors and presenting
partners for the 2023 FUSE Glass Artist Residency:
Arts South Australia
24