Home is where the heat is

ARTIST STATEMENTS
Elizabeth Casling and Graeme King
Through Make Your Own, CIT and Courses-on-Demand,
members of the wider community are enabled to make glass
works at Canberra Glassworks and, in that sense, they’re all
artists. Many are just one offs, but some people take advantage
of Courses-on-Demand and the mentoring program to increase
their skills and become independent hirers.
This is a valuable aspect of the Glassworks community
engagement and a selection of pieces made by these artists
would make an important contribution to an exhibition
showcasing 10 years at the Canberra Glassworks. Graeme and I
are two of these artists and have each contributed a piece of work
to this exhibition.
Ellen Collins
A revolutionary aspect of Walter Burley Griffin’s design for
Canberra was to have every house supplied with electricity,
generated by the Kingston Powerhouse. It is difficult to believe
that having a reliable electricity supply 24/7 has only been a
convenience available in (many) cities for less than a century.
These pieces reflect on the short life span of technological devices
which are all too soon relegated to historical objects, often
unrecognisable to future generations. The use of transparent
glass adds fragility and alludes to the transient nature of the
original object. I am inspired by the Vanitas still life genre that
emerged in 17th Century Dutch paintings at the height of the
Dutch Empire. They were a didactic message to the masses about
the transience of life and the dangers of the excesses of wealth
and indulgence – a message highly appropriate to our own
contemporary Western culture.
Jacqueline Knight
I am constantly fascinated by the phenomenological experience
of using glass as a sculptural metaphor. I aim to speak to the
viewer by way of a visual experience that reflects their sense of
self.
Mounted on a wall, the wings represent the essence of flight
yet they are trapped, mid-flight and frozen in time. This in turn
pushes the sculpture into the realm of architectural adornment.
The adorned room becomes a metaphor for relationships and
a current state of being. The materiality of glass offers many
ambiguities resembling human interactions.
Both humans and glass contain intriguing polarities; glass is
strong yet fragile, luscious yet cold, heavy yet allows light to pass
through. In black lustre, the reflective glass mirrors the outside
world, outwardly opposing everything that is presented to it.”
Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello
Prior to the creation of Lake Burley Griffin the area where the
Canberra Glassworks stands was a grassy landscape dotted with
lowland native trees and shrubs. Close to the confluence of the
Molonglo River and Jerrabomberra Creek the area may have been
occasionally flooded giving rise to seasonal mudflats, yielding
fertile soil for food species, including grains, seeds and bush
fruits, enhancing its capacity to sustain traditional rotational
habitation, camps, meetings and ceremonies. In these two works
I have sought to evoke some of the textures, colours, forms and
life-cycle changes across seasons of the more than 30 species of
native grasses, shrubs, trees , reeds and rushes that characterised
the landscape before non-Indigenous habitation. This diversity
included multiple species of sedges, reeds, tussock and kangaroo
grasses, eucalypts, casuarinas, Xanthorreas, kunzea, lomandras,
grevilleas, bursarias, dianellas, acacias, she-oaks, wattles, tea
trees and paperbarks which sustained more than 180 species of
native and migratory birds, 34 of which are now endangered.
Mark Elliot
In the context of architecture (and town planning), I see the
tree as the improvisational other - needed by humans to
counterbalance the order of the built environment yet not always
trusted for its independent mind - somewhat like an unruly artist -
commissioned to provide an unspecified artwork for a building.
The tree is a wild thing, which can be partially but never entirely
tamed with its tendency to sprout roots and branches in
unexpected places. In another sense, each tree is itself a piece of
architecture which has grown as a unique variation on its own
genetic plan and plays host to a vast array of inhabitants both
above and below ground - many of whom either contribute to, or
challenge its integrity.
I encounter this tree each time I stay at the Glassworks Chapel
where it stands sentinel (from a human viewpoint). Since reading
HOME IS WHERE THE HEAT IS | 26 OCTOBER 2017 TO 14 JANUARY 2018