FUSE Glass Prize 2020 Catalogue

2020

Contents 

Introduction 2 

Donors 6 

Judges 8 

Bursting the bubble – 12 

glass in an expanded field 

by Margot Osborne 

Emerging Category Finalists 

Hamish Donaldson 44 

Billy James Crellin and Bastien Thomas 46 

Alexandra Hirst 48 

Erica Izard 50 

Ayano Yoshizumi 52 

Madisyn Zabel 54 

Established Category Finalists 

Kate Baker 58 

Clare Belfrage 60 

Penny Byrne 62 

Cobi Cockburn 64 

Nadège Desgenétez 66 

Wendy Fairclough 68 

Marcel Hoogstad Hay 70 

Jeremy Lepisto 72 

Madeline Prowd 74 

Yusuke Takemura 76 

Hiromi Tango 78 

Kathryn Wightman 80 

Credits 84

Introduction 

JamFactory is proud to present the 

2020 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). 

The 2020 prize attracted entries from New 

Zealand and every Australian state and 

territory apart from the Northern 

Territory. This year’s judges rose to the 

difficult challenge of selecting twelve finalists 

in the Established Category and six finalists 

in the Emerging Category, with all of the 

selected works featured in this publication. 

JamFactory is enormously grateful for the 

efforts of the 2020 judging panel: Justine 

Olsen, Eva Czernis-Ryl, Robert Cook, Jessica 

Loughlin and Brian Parkes. 

Provided the current COVID-19 travel 

restrictions are relaxed, the judging panel will 

reconvene in September to review the works 

in the finalists’ exhibition at JamFactory in 

Adelaide to select winners of each category. 

Information about the 2020 winners will be 

broadly circulated and available on the 

dedicated website fuseglassprize.com 

following a formal announcement. 

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 and 

the judges were again pleased to see a broad 

range of ambitious and experimental works 

among the entries. The formal, technical and 

conceptual diversity represented through the 

work of the 18 selected finalists is strong 

evidence of the strength of the practice in 

our region. 

The FUSE Glass Prize is an important initiative 

for JamFactory and we have already begun 

planning to further elevate the prize and build 

on its impact in coming years. We will soon 

announce details of a new FUSE Glass Artist 

2

Erica Izard, Emotional Tide (detail), 2020 

Photo: Greg Piper

Yuseke Takemura, Seeing Beyond Silence (detail), 2019 

Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert 

4

Residency in 2021 and we plan to tour the 

2022 finalists’ exhibition to New Zealand. 

This year we are thrilled to have added a 

whole new section to this exhibition 

catalogue – a commissioned essay surveying 

developments in the field of glass art in 

Australia and New Zealand over the past two 

years. We plan to do this for each biennial 

catalogue to create a valuable archive for 

students, artists, collectors and researchers 

in the field of glass. We are truly grateful to 

Margot Osborne, author of the landmark 2005 

publication Australian Glass Today, for writing 

such an insightful overview for 2020. 

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 and 

we are once again proud to note that several 

JamFactory alumni are represented in the 

independent selection of finalists for the 

2020 FUSE Glass Prize. 

This publication accompanies an exhibition 

of the same works at JamFactory in Adelaide 

from 18 May to 20 September 2020 and at 

the Australian Design Centre in Sydney 

from 9 October to 18 November 2020. 

fuseglassprize.com

Donors 

Thank you to our donors and sponsors. 

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 and we are thrilled that Jim and 

Helen have generously agreed to support 

the evolution of the prize over the next 

four years, enabling with other donors, 

the development of a new FUSE Residency 

Award in the alternate year of the prize, 

expansion of the FUSE Publication and 

plans to tour the finalists’ exhibition to 

New Zealand from 2022. 

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 are delighted that 

Ian Wall OAM and Pamela Wall AM are 

continuing their support, which began in 

2018, and we look forward to announcing 

how their generosity will enrich the above 

mentioned FUSE Residency Award in 2021. 

For 2020 we are delighted to welcome 

several new supporters this year - David 

McKee AM and Pam McKee as well as 

Susan Armitage, Sonia Laidlaw, Trina Ross, 

and additional anonymous donors. 

We are also grateful for new support in 

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. 

This generous group of donors has 

contributed funds for the prizes as well 

as marketing and program costs, enabling 

JamFactory to continue to develop this 

award into Australasia’s richest prize for 

glass, and what is increasingly being 

regarded as one of the world’s premier 

recognitions for artists working in this 

dynamic medium. 

For artists, audiences and collectors who 

are drawn to glass, there will be a great 

many 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 several supporting sponsors 

who have assisted through cash or in-kind 

support. We are delighted that the FUSE 

6

Glass Prize has been seen as a rewarding 

investment by The Louise luxury 

accommodation in the Barossa, the Mayfair 

Hotel in the Adelaide CBD, Pitcher Partners, 

Seppeltsfield Wines and Sydney-based web 

design agency Canvas Group. Each of these 

sponsors has continued to support the prize 

since 2016. 

We also gratefully acknowledge the 

ongoing support that JamFactory 

receives from the South Australian 

Government through the Department 

for Innovation and Skills and in particular 

we thank the Minister, the Honorable David 

Pisoni MP. JamFactory is also grateful for 

support from the Commonwealth 

Government through the Australia Council 

and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy – an 

initiative of the Commonwealth, State and 

Territory Governments and we express our 

appreciation to the Federal Minister, the 

Honorable Paul Fletcher MP. 

Nadège Desgenétez, Lucent, 2018 

Photo: Greg Piper

Judges 

Robert Cook 

Curator of 20th Century Art, Art Gallery of 

Western Australia, Perth 

Robert Cook is Curator of 20th 

Century Art at the Art Gallery of 

Western Australia. He has been the 

manager of the Tom Malone Prize since 

its inception in 2003. Cook’s most recent 

design exhibition for AGWA is Family 

Resemblance featuring works in ceramics 

by Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Gwyn Hanssen 

Piggot, Sandra Black, Gordon Baldwin, 

Margaret West and Ron Nagle in 

conversation with paintings and prints 

by Brent Harris. 

Eva Czernis-Ryl 

Curator, Museum of Applied Arts and 

Sciences, Sydney 

Eva Czernis-Ryl is an award-winning 

curator at the Museum of Applied Arts 

and Sciences in Sydney who is responsible 

for the extensive collections of Australian 

and European glass, ceramics, metalwork, 

jewellery and textiles, both historical and 

contemporary. Eva’s research interests 

focus on connections between decorative 

and fine arts, craft, design, science, 

technology and contemporary culture, 

and she has published in areas 

ranging from German Baroque sculpture 

to Australian studio practice and 

contemporary Italian design. Eva has 

curated and co-curated numerous 

exhibitions including Inspired! Design 

Across Time, A Fine Possession: Jewellery 

and Identity and Fantastical Worlds which 

is currently on display at the Powerhouse 

Museum. She is an Expert Examiner for 

the Australian Government’s National 

Cultural Heritage Committee, a Copland 

Foundation Attingham Scholar (2015 and 

2017) and holds a position on the Editorial 

Board of Garland magazine. 

8

Jessica Loughlin 

2018 FUSE Glass Prize Winner 

Jessica Loughlin is known for her quiet 

understated approach to kiln formed 

glass. Her artworks prompt a mediative 

reverie influenced by her fascination with 

the beauty of emptiness. Loughlin has 

been practicing for over 20 years during 

which she has exhibited in numerous 

international and national exhibitions. 

As well as the 2018 FUSE Glass Prize, 

her work has also been awarded the 

Tom Malone Art Prize in both 2004 and 

2007 and the Ranamok Prize. Her work 

is part of major public collections around 

the world including National Gallery of 

Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, Corning 

Museum of Glass NY USA, Mobile Museum 

of Art AL, USA, MUDAC Lausanne, 

Switzerland and Victorian and Albert 

Museum, London UK.

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 has been with JamFactory since 

April 2010, having worked in art and 

design organisations for more than 20 

years, and he is passionate about 

promoting the social, cultural and 

economic value of creativity and design. 

During ten years as Associate Director 

at Object Gallery in Sydney, he curated 

several important exhibitions including 

the landmark survey of contemporary 

Australian design; Freestyle: New 

Australian Design for Living. 

Brian is a graduate of the Tasmanian 

School of Art in Hobart and also has a 

significant background in commercial 

management within museums and 

galleries. He managed the merchandising 

and retail operations at the Museum of 

Contemporary Art, Sydney (1998-2000) 

and the National Gallery of Australia, 

Canberra (1995-98). 

10

Bursting the bubble – 

glass in an expanded field 

by Margot Osborne 

As a cultural signifier, glass has a history rich 

in ambiguous associations. Possibly no 

reference to glass is more open to multiple 

interpretations than that ancient biblical 

phrase from Corinthians, ‘through a glass 

darkly’. More recently, while glass petri dishes 

and test tubes may signify scientific advances 

and experiment, two of the dominant catch 

phrases of our times — the glass ceiling and 

the cultural bubble — signify limitation and 

containment. These associations — some 

overt and others left to the reader’s 

interpretation — are threaded through the 

following analysis of recent developments 

in contemporary glass in Australia and 

New Zealand, pointing to a complex, 

evolving scenario. 

Madisyn Zabel, Outline, 2018 

Image courtesy of the artist

My analysis starts from the position — no 

doubt not shared by all but based on many 

years observing the Australian glass scene — 

that since its inception in the 1970s 

Australian studio glass has evolved within 

its own supportive bubble, connected 

to the wider art and craft scene by a 

semi-permeable membrane. This relatively 

self-contained, close-knit ecosystem has 

enabled glass practitioners to develop their 

skills-based collaborative discipline through 

studio-based practices, combined with 

access to facilities such as those provided 

by JamFactory in Adelaide and Canberra 

Glassworks in Canberra. Many have followed 

a pattern of professional development 

throughout their careers, with residencies 

and regular global travel to attend 

conferences and give masterclasses at such 

glass specialist centres as the Pilchuck Glass 

School in Washington State, USA, the annual 

Glass Art Society (GAS) conference and The 

Studio at Corning Glass Museum, New York 

State. This past summer Clare Belfrage gave 

demonstrations at The Studio and Nick Mount 

travelled to Niijima, Japan to demonstrate 

at The Niijima Glass Festival. In May 2020 

a contingent of Australians will participate 

in the next GAS Conference, to be held in 

Sweden. For their part, JamFactory, Canberra 

Glassworks and tertiary glass courses at the 

University of South Australia (UniSA) and the 

Australian National University (ANU) have 

programs of visiting artists from within 

Australia and overseas. Glass artists have 

tended to further their careers within the 

bubble by achieving recognition in national 

and international glass prizes such as FUSE 

and selling to a dedicated clientele of 

collectors at international craft fairs such 

as SOFA Chicago and in specialist craft 

galleries such as Sabbia Gallery, Sydney. 

From a positive perspective, this modus 

operandi has led to attainment by the 

current generation of an exquisite virtuosity 

in handling their medium. Equally, it has 

insulated the glass scene from the worst 

excesses of contemporary art. While the 

contemporary art world has placed a premium 

on conceptual innovation, arguably there has 

been less appreciation of the innovation that 

grows from a deep understanding of a given 

medium through the skilled maker’s intuitive 

mind/hand coordination. For many lovers of 

contemporary glass, the human scale and 

material beauty of skilfully realised glass 

forms offer a welcome respite from the viral 

trends, fashionable posturing, spectacle and 

de-skilling as a badge of honour that are 

endemic to the art world. The potential 

downside has been the difficulty of breaking 

through the membrane to reach a wider 

public, and the associated risk of lack of 

creative oxygen and stimuli leading to a 

hermetic aesthetic. Fortunately, this is a 

worst case scenario. As the following survey 

of recent developments reveals, despite the 

very real threats to contemporary glass as a 

skills-based discipline, there are also healthy 

signs that a new generation of practitioners 

are entering an expanded field of 

contemporary practice. 

Tom Moore, Pyrotechnic Pufferfish, 2016 

Photo: Grant Hancock 

14

In recent years the range of awards and 

professional development opportunities 

available to both established and emerging 

artists has diversified. Australia now has 

three major glass prizes, each with a 

slightly different emphasis. In addition to 

JamFactory’s FUSE Glass Prize, established in 

2016 and valued at $20,000, that is open to 

both Australian and New Zealand artists, 

there is the Art Gallery of Western 

Australia’s acquisitive Tom Malone Prize, 

valued at $15,000, for Australian glass 

artists, and the new Klaus Moje Glass 

Award, established in 2019 to replace the 

Canberra Glassworks’ Hindmarsh Prize. This 

last biennial prize is valued at $10,000 plus a 

four week residency at Canberra Glassworks. 

In addition, for emerging artists there is the 

biennial National Emerging Art Glass Prize 

presented by Wagga Wagga Art Gallery in its 

National Art Glass Gallery, its latest iteration 

is on display from 14 March to 21 June 2020. 

Collectively these prizes provide the 

opportunity, firstly, to acknowledge the 

achievements of contemporary Australian and 

New Zealand glass artists, and secondly to 

increase public exposure to and awareness 

of these achievements. 

Amongst the cohort of finalists in the first 

two FUSE Glass Prize exhibitions, presented 

by JamFactory in 2016 and 2018, there were 

those from the first generation of studio glass 

artists, who entered the field in the 1980s and 

1990s and who are now at the top of their 

game — making glass objects of unsurpassed 

beauty, imbued with originality, ingenuity and 

technical virtuosity. They are winning awards, 

exhibiting internationally and having work 

acquired for public collections. Not far behind, 

the next generation of tertiary-trained glass 

artists have benefited from the development 

of national and international networks of 

conferences, residencies and masterclasses 

offering unprecedented opportunities for 

professional development. In turn, the FUSE 

Glass Prize’s Emerging Category extends 

these developmental opportunities to the 

just-hatched generation who are continuing 

to emerge from tertiary glass programs 

in Australia. 

To a certain extent, the achievements over the 

past two years of Clare Belfrage and Jessica 

Loughlin, winners respectively of the FUSE 

Glass Prize in 2016 and 2018, may be seen as a 

vindication of the judges’ selections and an 

indicator of the prize’s beneficial impact. At 

the same time, it is important to appreciate 

that for these artists winning the FUSE Glass 

Prize was the culmination of many years of 

sustained artistic development and it is this 

that has provided the foundation for their 

ongoing success. In their studio-based 

approach to their respective specialisations in 

blown and in kiln-formed glass, Belfrage and 

Loughlin are rigorously experimental artists 

at both a technical and an aesthetic level. 

Belfrage has continued to extend her 

approach to cane drawing across the 

surface of the blown glass vessel, in emulation 

of rhythmic abstract patterns that inspire her 

within Australia’s natural environment. It was 

one of her works from the In Deep series 

that was awarded the FUSE prize, while 

another from the Quiet Shifting series has 

Clare Belfrage, Quiet Shifting, Purple and Gold, 2019 

Photo: Pippy Mount

een acquired for the collection of the 

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 

and two works have also been acquired for 

the collection of the Powerhouse Museum, 

Sydney. A further two works from an earlier 

series have been acquired by the Art 

Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), Perth. 

Belfrage’s 2018 JamFactory Icon exhibition, 

A Measure of Time, is touring nationally 

and is accompanied by the Wakefield Press 

SALA Monograph Clare Belfrage: Rhythms 

of Necessity, written by Kay Lawrence and 

Sera Waters. 

For her part, Jessica Loughlin has been 

honoured as the first Australian to be 

selected as a finalist in the prestigious 2020 

Loewe Foundation Craft Prize. She will be 

among thirty international finalists whose 

work will be exhibited at the Musée des Arts 

Decoratifs, Paris from 21 May to 12 July 2020. 

Coinciding with this Paris exhibition, in May 

2020 Sydney’s newly relocated Sabbia Gallery 

is presenting a solo exhibition of her latest 

work. Loughlin’s entry in the Loewe prize is 

a free-standing glass sculpture, receptor of 

light ix, 2019, from the same series as her 

winning FUSE entry, receptor of light v, 2018. 

The minimalist works in this series are 

distinguished by their capacity to transition 

through tonal shifts from warm to cool in 

response to changes in natural light 

throughout the day. This is achieved by 

means of fine molecules suspended within 

the opaline glass that reflect the blue light 

while absorbing the warm spectrum. 

Jessica Loughlin, receptor of light ix, 2019 

Photo: Rachel Harris 

18

The Art Gallery of Western Australia’s annual 

Tom Malone Prize, now in its eighteenth year, 

has pursued a slightly different model to the 

non-acquisitive FUSE Glass Prize. Through the 

acquisition of the winning work each year 

the Gallery has developed an outstanding 

collection of some of the most innovative 

and adventurous approaches to blown and 

kiln-formed glass. It was won in 2018 by 

Adelaide glass artist Tom Moore for his 

Pyrotechnic Pufferfish, and in 2019 by 

Melbourne glass artist Mark Eliott’s Down 

at the Water Table. i This year’s fifteen finalists 

include a trans-generational representation 

from every Australian state and exemplify 

the continuing expansion of notions of what 

contemporary glass might be. An exemplar 

of this expanded field is Adelaide artist Jason 

Sims’ entry, Nucleus, 2019, a sculpture of 

reflective glass, steel and LED lighting. This 

work is emblematic of Sims’ body of recent 

sculptures in which patterns created by 

illumination and reflection generate 

perceptual intrigue and illusion. In 2018 one of 

his large scale light sculptures was installed in 

Adelaide’s CBD opposite the Adelaide Casino 

and Railway Station. His largest commission to 

date, Echo, for the City of Unley, Adelaide was 

unveiled at Heywood Park in February 2020. 

AGWA’s acquisitions extend beyond the 

Tom Malone Prize. In addition to the two 

Belfrage works mentioned above, since 2018 

the Gallery has purchased works by Mel 

Douglas, Holly Grace and Blanche Tilden 

and a suite of kiln-fired glass panels by 

Warlayirti artists from the Balgo region in 

Western Australia. These were made as a 

collaboration with non-indigenous glass 

artist Bethany Wheeler as part of the 

Gallery’s Desert River Sea indigenous 

project and exhibition. The highlight is a ten 

panel wall piece, Bush Tucker Collaborative, 

2017, by artists Miriam Baadjo, Imelda 

(Yukenbarri) Gugaman, Christine Yukenbarri, 

Frances Nowee, Jane Gimme and Helen 

Nagomara. In this and the other smaller 

panels the vibrant transparent and translucent 

colours of the kiln-fired glass medium proved 

ideally suited to adaptation of the warm tones 

of the desert palette and the abstract mosaic 

patterns of the Warlayirti bush tucker designs. 

Two other recent collaborations between 

non-indigenous glass artists and isolated 

indigenous communities were the 

employment of Jessica Loughlin in 2019 to 

teach glass skills to the Cheeditha Art Group 

in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and 

the JamFactory’s Ninuku Arts project with 

artists living in Kalka, located in a remote 

region of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara 

Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in South 

Australia. This project was supervised by 

former JamFactory glass artist Mandi King, 

who is manager of the Ninuku arts centre. 

King showed the artists how to apply their 

designs using enamels painted on the blown 

glass forms. These were then kiln-fired at 

Ninuku before being transported to 

JamFactory where the glass studio team 

encased the painted forms in a further 

protective layer of clear glass using the 

Graal technique first developed by Orrefors. 

The results of this project were displayed 

for the first time at JamFactory during the 

Art Gallery of South Australia’s 2019 

Tarnanthi Festival. ii 

Nyanu Watson, Tjulpu, 2019 

Photo: Grant Hancock

Kirstie Rea, What remains, 2019 

Image courtesy of the artist 

22

The Canberra Glassworks Hindmarsh Prize 

was established in 2016 and had only three 

iterations. The final prize exhibition in 2018 

toured to the Toyama Glass Museum in Japan. 

It was won by Sydney based artist Kate Baker, 

who has also been a finalist in both the FUSE 

and Tom Malone prizes. Baker, a graduate of 

the ANU Glass Workshop, has a combined 

background in both photography and glass 

and has set out to position herself across 

both the glass and wider contemporary art 

scene. She works habitually off the plinth 

and on a relatively large scale with applied 

digital imagery and enamels on sheet glass, 

backed with aluminium. This layering of 

semi-translucent, opaque and reflective 

media creates an atmospheric palimpsest of 

blurred images that evoke an enigmatic 

emotional aura. 

In place of the Hindmarsh Prize, in 

September 2019 Canberra Glassworks 

presented the first iteration of the biennial 

Klaus Moje Glass Award. This was won by 

highly respected artist Kirstie Rea, who in 

her early career worked closely with Moje. 

Her award winning work in kiln-formed glass, 

What remains, 2019, is an exemplar of her 

recent body of exquisitely refined draped 

and folded forms in pale translucent tones 

that encapsulate stillness and quietude. The 

new award forms part of the larger Klaus 

Moje Projekt (KMP), a partnership between 

Canberra Glassworks, ANU School of Art and 

Design and Ausglass, to honour the legacy of 

the great glass artist Klaus Moje, who died in 

2016. In alternate years to the award, the Klaus 

Moje Projekt plans to present workshops and 

masterclasses, the first planned for 2020 with 

American glass artist April Surgent. Another 

aspect of the KMP umbrella will be a Klaus 

Moje Address at the biennial Ausglass

conference, to be held in Melbourne in 

February 2021. Ausglass, now in its fortysecond 

year, has decided on the theme: 

Futures Past, to generate a dialogue around 

issues of sustainability. This theme reflects an 

awareness of the need to address a cluster of 

issues that cumulatively are generating winds 

of change, de-stabilising the glass ecosystem. 

As the conference flyer states: ‘It is time to 

take stock; to examine the arc between 

history and tradition, modern day technology 

and innovation and the future challenges 

of sustainability and responsibility in 

glass making’. 

Rea was one of eight artists associated with 

the ANU glass program who were selected 

for New Glass Now, the influential US survey 

exhibition and publication of the latest 

directions in contemporary glass, held 

at Corning Museum from May 2019 – 

January 2020. Other exhibiting artists were 

Matthew Curtis, Mel Douglas, Judi Elliott, 

Jenni Kemarre Martiniello, Kate Baker, 

Nadège Desgenétez and Blanche Tilden. It is 

interesting to note that it would be difficult to 

find any stylistic tendencies in common across 

this diverse group of artists, except perhaps a 

shared interest in continuing to work towards 

expanding conceptions of how one medium, 

glass, can be realised in so many diverse 

creative manifestations. 

Glass Utopia was another important 

exhibition featuring a predominance of 

Canberra artists. This was curated for Craft 

ACT by Italian designers Annalisa Rosso 

and Francesco Mainardi, with the theme of 

cross-fertilisation between Australian and 

Italian glass artists and designers. It was 

initially presented at Craft ACT from 31 

October to 14 December 2019, and Design 

Tasmania from 6 March to 5 April 2020, 

before travelling to Italy for Milan Design 

Week and Venice Glass Week. Australians 

selected by Rosso and Mainardi were Peter 

Bowles, Mel Douglas, Liam Fleming, 

Elizabeth Kelly, Jenni Kemarre Martiniello 

and Tom Skeehan. 

Possibly the most influential recent initiative 

to recognise the high achievements of 

contemporary glass artists in Australia was 

the announcement by the Powerhouse 

Museum in late 2019 of its Willoughby 

Bequest 2020 Commissioning Program for 

contemporary glass and ceramics. Each 

of six artists across these fields have been 

commissioned to create a new work for the 

Powerhouse collection, with the commission 

valued at $30,000 per artist. In the glass field 

the three artists commissioned were Scott 

Chaseling, Tim Edwards and Jenni Kemarre 

Martiniello. Chaseling, who is currently a PhD 

candidate in sculpture at the University of 

Wollongong, has pursued an unconventional 

but high achieving career in glass and 

sculpture. After initially winning international 

recognition and prestigious awards for his 

roll-up murrine glass, a technical innovation 

devised in collaboration with Moje and Rea, 

he worked for several years abroad at the 

University of Sunderland and then in Berlin as 

director of Parkhaus Projects and Berlin Glas 

e.V. It was in Berlin that he moved his focus to 

low-tech readymade sculptures incorporating 

found objects and recycled glass. After 

returning to live in Canberra he created 

a series of dazzling large scale sculptural 

24

Tim Edwards, Hollow, 2017 


26

assemblages using thousands of small rings 

cut from recycled glass bottles. However, his 

recent work exhibited on the Australian 

Contemporary website reveals a return to 

virtuoso blown and etched glass vessels as 

a vehicle for what he refers to as ‘frozen 

moments’ of graphic story-telling. In 2019 

Chaseling was the first Australian to 

participate in the Soneva Fushi Glass 

Residency in Japan. 

Edwards has achieved international 

recognition for his blown and carved glass 

in which there is optical dialogue between 

positive and negative space, and between 

three dimensional form and an illusion of two 

dimensional drawing. A suite of these works 

was exhibited at the Art Gallery of South 

Australia as part of the 2018 Adelaide Biennial, 

curated by Erica Green, with AGSA acquiring 

one of the works from this series. In 2019 he 

held a solo exhibition at the leading American 

glass gallery, William Traver, Seattle. 

Jenni Kemarre Martiniello is an indigenous 

artist of Arrernte, Chinese and Anglo-Celtic 

descent, who is known for her interpretations 

in glass of indigenous woven forms such as 

the fish traps and dilly bags distinctive to the 

Kaurna, Ngarrindjeri, and other indigenous 

groups. She first encountered glass through 

workshops at Canberra Glassworks in 2008 

and has continued an association with the 

centre in her ensuing career. While Martiniello 

has been practising for a relatively short time 

in comparison to Chaseling and Edwards, she 

has been extremely active as an exhibitor, 

receiving multiple awards. Her work has been 

acquired for many public collections 

including the National Gallery of Australia 

and the Corning Museum of Glass. As 

distinct from an appropriation, she considers 

her glass basket forms as a tribute to the 

traditional weavers and their cultural 

practices. Working with teams of glass 

blowers, Martiniello manipulates the twisted 

canes of traditional Venetian glass into 

extrapolated blown forms that are an 

analogy for the rhythmic organic patterns 

of indigenous woven baskets. In her most 

ambitious work to date she has departed 

from the woven form in a series of Burial 

and Warrior poles standing two metres tall 

and assembled from kiln-formed glass that 

has been enamelled, painted and adorned 

with mixed media. 

Canberra Glassworks has impressive facilities 

for hosting resident and visiting glass 

practitioners, as well as catering to casual 

use by the cohort of Canberra glass artists, 

and these activities have always been at 

the heart of its core business. Since the 

appointment of Aimee Frodsham as artistic 

director, some of the centre’s latent potential 

Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello, Warrior Pole #4: Not Forgotten (Gallipoli Shield), 2018 

Photo: Adam McGrath

in this respect has been realised through a 

ratcheting up of the level of ambition, with 

a particular focus on collaborations with 

non-glass contemporary practitioners 

including indigenous artists. In 2020 

Brenden Scott French is there on a six-month 

Creative Fellowship. Other visiting artists are 

Tom Moore, Patricia Piccinini, Megan Cope, 

Jonathan Jones, Anna Mlasowsky (USA), 

Carrie Iverson (USA), Peter Nilsson, Rob 

Schwartz and Kirstie Rea, plus a residency 

by design group: Tom Skeehan, Tom Fereday, 

Emma Elizabeth, Anna Varendorff and 

Andrew Simpson. Contemporary indigenous 

artist Tony Albert will exhibit at Canberra 

Glassworks from 26 March to 10 May 2020 in 

conjunction with undertaking a commission 

to create stained glass windows based on the 

Brothers series. Frodsham, Kirstie Rea and 

Maree Clarke will be travelling to the GAS 

conference in Sweden to talk on the ethics 

of the production of indigenous works. 

Canberra Glassworks also offers a Flux 

Mentorship Award to a mid-career artist 

wishing to develop further in the medium 

of glass. Canberra Glassworks has embarked 

also on a touring exhibition program, with 

its planned regional tour of Upending 

Expectations, to be curated by Frances 

Lindsay, receiving funding from the 

Australia Council. 

The 2018 Hindmarsh Glass Prize tour to Japan 

and the Craft ACT tour of Glass Utopia to 

Milan remain relatively rare examples of recent 

international glass projects and exchanges 

at an institutional level. While there are 

longstanding connections with both Italy and 

the USA by individual practitioners, there 

have been surprisingly few institutional or 

individual connections established with 

organisations in South East Asia. Even New 

Zealand/Australian organisational connections 

in glass remain relatively under-developed. 

The annual Ranamok Glass Prize for 

Australian and New Zealand glass artists was 

one such initiative, but this ceased in 2014. 

In this situation, preliminary plans by 

JamFactory to tour the 2022 FUSE Glass 

Prize to New Zealand come as a welcome 

step towards a closer connection. 

In February 2019 the first cross-Tasman CoLab 

conference between Ausglass and the New 

Zealand Society of Artists in Glass was held 

in Whanganui with presentations by New 

Zealand and Australian practitioners. 

Whanganui has long been one of the centres 

for glass practice in New Zealand. It is home 

to New Zealand Glassworks, the first national 

centre for community glass, where there is an 

active program of workshops and learning 

opportunities. The centre offers a four week 

residency for New Zealand artists, with the 

next to take place in July 2020. Acclaimed 

Australian-born, New Zealand-based glass 

artist, Claudia Borella, who is a graduate of 

the ANU glass program, runs international 

masterclasses and workshops from her 

studio. Seattle glass artist Morgan Madison 

was visiting artist in October 2019. Saman 

Kalantari (Iran/Italy) was a visiting artist in 

March 2018. Borella was an invited artist at 

Verarte in Switzerland in August 2019 and 

was a finalist in the inaugural Klaus Moje 

Glass Award. 

28

Claudia Borella, River in Me 2, 2019 

Photo: the artist

The New Zealand Society of Artists in Glass, 

established in 1980, promotes studio glass 

and operates workshops throughout the 

country, based on the model of glass 

practitioners learning new skills through 

demonstrations by master practitioners. 

Apart from this practitioner membership 

organisation, in comparison to the Australian 

situation there is relatively little infrastructure 

in New Zealand to support the development 

of contemporary glass — in terms of tertiary 

training, awards and prizes, major exhibitions 

in public galleries, and public collections of 

glass. One such collection, however, is held by 

the Auckland War Memorial Museum. In 2019 

the Museum published a substantial overview 

anthology, Crafting Aotearoa, edited by Karl 

Chitham, Kolokesa Māhina-Tuai and 

Damian Skinner. In her essay on ‘Studio Glass 

in Aotearoa’, Grace Lai surveyed both the 

history and current state of glass. She noted 

that most practitioners have specialised in 

cast and kiln glass, while there is a shortage 

of glass blowers. Standing out in this latter 

field is Stephen Bradbourne, who is known 

for his murrine glass. Bradbourne also runs 

a commercial production studio, Monmouth 

Glass Studio with partner Isaac Katzoff, and 

in July 2019 the partners opened a retail 

store in Auckland. 

The absorption by the Universal College of 

Learning (UCOL) of the Wanganui Glass 

School, Whanganui, due to falling enrolments, 

meant the restructuring of the country’s only 

such educational facility for glass. Studio glass 

training is being offered as an elective for a 

one year diploma course. This is run by 

UCOL senior lecturer Kathryn Wightman, 

who originally emigrated to New Zealand 

from the UK in 2014 to work at the Wanganui 

Glass School. In 2012 Wightman gained her 

PhD at the University of Sunderland, where 

she worked with Jeffrey Sarmiento, on the 

integration of glass and printmaking 

processes. She won the final iteration of 

the New Zealand Ranamok Glass Prize in 

2014 and was a finalist in the first two FUSE 

Glass Prizes. She is known for her innovative 

integration of digital printed technologies and 

kiln-fused glass to create large scale glass 

walls and carpets. From 15 February to 3 May 

2020 Wightman exhibited The pattillo project 

at Sarjeant Gallery. This monumental wall of 

fused glass printed in intricate floral patterns 

was her most ambitious work in this vein 

to date. An indication that Wightman is 

expanding beyond glass as a medium is 

the news that she won the 2019 and 2020 

Whanganui Art Review not for her glass 

but for digitally printed sculptures. 

In 2017-2018 Sarjeant Gallery presented a 

career survey of the glass sculptures of New 

Zealand-born, Adelaide-based artist Wendy 

Fairclough. This exhibition was then shown 

at Objectspace in Auckland from 2 June to 

21 July 2019. In addition to Sarjeant Gallery, 

galleries showing regular exhibitions of 

contemporary glass in New Zealand include 

Form Gallery, Christchurch, AVID Gallery, 

Wellington and Masterworks Gallery, 

Auckland. English-New Zealand glass artist 

Emma Camden is scheduled to hold a solo 

Kathryn Wightman, Still, 2018 

Photo: Tracey Grant

exhibition at Masterworks in April-May 

2020. As is the case in Australia, such 

well-established glass artists as Borella, 

Camden and Galia Amsel pursue 

international careers with representing 

galleries in the USA, Asia and Australia. 

Amsel is represented by Sabbia, Sydney, 

and by Adrian Sassoon, London. 

It is in the tertiary education sector that 

change is taking place that will within a few 

years feed into the wider glass scene. It is 

possible to give only a glimpse of these 

changes within the scope of this overview. 

In October 2019 Richard Whiteley, acclaimed 

Australian glass artist and Head of the 

Australian National University’s glass 

workshop since 2002, resigned to take 

up an appointment as Senior Program 

Manager at The Studio, Corning Museum 

of Glass in New York State, USA. Whiteley 

continued the legacy of founding head Klaus 

Moje in pursuing an integration of discipline, 

skill and creativity through deep knowledge 

of the medium. During his long tenure at 

ANU the glass program was recognised 

nationally and internationally, both for 

producing successful alumni and as a centre 

for professional glass practice through its 

employment of notable glass practitioners on 

staff, through residencies and visiting artists. 

Whiteley was joined in 2005 by international 

artist Nadege Desgenetz, who has made a 

significant contribution to the glass program 

at ANU while also building her reputation as 

a glass artist both in Australia and overseas. 

Currently in addition to her role as a lecturer 

in glass at ANU, she is undertaking an external 

PhD at the University of South Australia. 

Richard Whiteley, Blue Void, 2019 

Photo: Greg Piper 

32

One of Australia’s foremost glass artists, Mel 

Douglas, has been a sessional lecturer at ANU 

and has recently completed her PhD there. 

Among recent graduates, Madisyn Zabel, 

has achieved a great deal since graduating 

in 2015 with first class honours. She has 

undertaken a residency program at Chrysler 

Museum of Glass in Norfolk, Virginia, and 

residencies at Berlin Glas e.V. and Canberra 

Glassworks. She won the Warm Glass UK’s 

Bullseye Glass Prize in 2016 and the Jutta 

Cuny-Franz Foundation, Dusseldorf, Talent 

Award in 2017. Her work has been shown in 

the Corning Museum of Glass New Glass 

Review and most recently her solo exhibition, 

Perceptual Reversal, was presented by Wagga 

Wagga National Art Glass Gallery. Another 

recent graduate of the program Rose-Mary 

Faulkner was awarded the Bullseye Projects 

Silver Award (academic) for a rising talent in 

kiln-glass in Emerge 2018. Faulkner’s series 

of panels, Bare 6-8, 2017, are distinguished 

by wonderfully subtle handling of tone 

and composition 

In January 2020 ANU announced the 

appointment of Dr Jeffrey Sarmiento to the 

School of Art and Design. Sarmiento comes 

to ANU from his former position as Reader in 

Glass, the University of Sunderland, UK. He is 

a highly qualified academic and artist, holding 

a PhD from Sunderland and having been a 

Fulbright Fellow in Denmark. In his glass 

practice he has pioneered application of 

digital graphics to glass and has explored 

issues of cultural identity springing from his 

own American/Filipino heritage and his 

interest in the distinctive cultural identities 

of other countries he has visited. Sarmiento’s 

new book The Glass Reader, a critical text for 

glass study, is due for publication in 2020. 

His dual interests in critical theory and in high 

tech approaches to digital fabrication are 

portents of a shift in direction for ANU’s 

glass program. 

The glass program at Sydney College of the 

Arts under head of the SCA Andrew Lavery 

shows promising signs of a new injection 

of energy with the projected move to new 

premises located on the main campus of the 

University of Sydney. Noted glass 

practitioners Cobi Cockburn and Ben Edols 

are both technicians at SCA working to set 

up the new hot-glass facility to be 

operational early in 2020. At the University 

of South Australia, 2018 was the first year of 

the change from a Bachelor of Visual Art with 

specialisations in disciplines including glass, 

to a cross-disciplinary non-specialist 

Bachelor of Contemporary Art (DBCX). 

Gabriella Bisetto is studio head, glass and 

ceramics at UniSA, and a noted glass artist, 

whose work is currently part of the Australian 

Design Centre’s touring exhibition, Obsesssed: 

Compelled to make. She is also one of 

fourteen artists in the forthcoming 

Canberra Glassworks touring exhibition, 

Upending expectations: contemporary glass. 

According to Bisetto, due to falling student 

numbers UniSA’s hot-glass elective offers 

more limited supervised and unsupervised 

studio access. Students wishing to pursue 

professional practice in glass are able to do 

a placement at nearby JamFactory and then 

have the possibility of advancing to the 

JamFactory’s Associate Program. The 

difficulty for students wishing to follow a 

career in contemporary glass is that there is 

no substitute for skill and understanding of

the medium. This requires hours and hours 

of hands-on studio practice with access to 

professional studio technicians. It will be 

interesting to see whether this can be 

achieved at UniSA through its re-structured 

DBCX degree. 

In recent years the UniSA glass program has 

produced a succession of success stories in 

glass, including the winners of the Emerging 

Category of the 2016 and 2018 FUSE Glass 

Prize, namely Alex Valero and Ursula Halpin 

respectively. Amongst its graduating class of 

2019, Rita Kellaway was awarded the Pilchuck 

Scholarship and short-listed for the Adelaide 

Hilton Hotel $25,000 foyer art commission. 

Jessica Murtagh and Jianzhen Wu were 

selected as finalists in the Milano Vetro-35 

Prize, held at the Sforza Castle, Milan in 

February-March 2020. Murtagh’s Modern 

Relic series is inspired by the narrative 

designs of Ancient Grecian urns that have 

been given a contemporary graphic twist. 

She won the Ausglass Vicki Torr Emerging 

Artist Prize for 2019 and was a finalist in the 

Tom Bass Figurative Sculpture Prize for 2020. 

Wu, in her series Holistic Therapy, 2019, has 

created a sculptural tangle of distorted blown 

glass tubes. Each has a cork stopper and 

contains different essential oils aimed at 

easing anxiety. Wu received the FELTspace 

Graduate Award and was selected for the 

annual Helpmann Academy Graduate 

Exhibition. Other finalists in Milano Vetro-35 

were UniSA honours alumna Zoe Woods, ANU 

alumni Bastien Thomas, a former JamFactory 

Glass Studio Associate, and Madisyn Zabel. 

At a postgraduate level, in addition to the 

external PhD research of Nadege Desgenetez 

previously mentioned, UniSA PhD candidate 

Naomi Hunter, has been working with 

neuroscientists as artist in residence 

at the South Australian Health and Medical 

Research Institute, located adjacent to the 

University’s City West campus. Tom Moore 

completed his PhD in 2019 and is currently 

an adjunct research fellow, working in part 

from the university’s glass studio. His 

doctoral exhibition, Agents of Incongruity, 

was held in June 2019 at the SASA Gallery 

and showcased his virtuosity in combining 

blown and lampworked glass to create 

fantastical hybrid forms. In 2019 a suite of 

these sculptures was acquired by the Art 

Gallery of South Australia. Moore was a 

central artist in AGSA’s 2016 Adelaide 

Biennial, curated by Lisa Slade, with a gallery 

devoted to an installation of hundreds of 

his glass sculptures and a commissioned 

sculpture in the AGSA forecourt on North 

Terrace. In recent years he has extended 

is glass practice into the field of digital 

animation, with his hybrid glass figures 

animated in nonsensical narratives drawing 

on his underlying concerns around the 

troubled state of the relationship between 

culture and nature. This year Moore will 

be honoured as the feature artist for 

JamFactory’s 2020 Icon exhibition, planned 

to tour nationally, with an accompanying 

monograph published by JamFactory and 

Wakefield Press and written by Lisa Slade, 

Mark Thomson and Adrian Franklin. 

For the latest generation emerging from 

the nation’s art schools there are signs 

that finding the right niche within the gallery 

and exhibition scene in Australia and overseas 

has become increasingly more difficult. The 

34

Jianzhen Wu, Holistic Therapy 7, 2020 

Image courtesy of the artist

36

field has grown crowded at the same time 

as the top-end collecting market is showing 

some signs of contraction, with closures of 

Australian and US galleries that show or 

specialise in contemporary glass. Kirra 

Galleries, Melbourne closed in 2017, Hill 

Smith Gallery, Adelaide (representing Tom 

Moore) closed in 2019. In the USA Tansey 

Contemporary in Santa Fe, New Mexico 

has closed and Bullseye Connection, 

Portland Oregon, has transformed into 

Bullseye Projects. 

The success of Sabbia Gallery in Sydney is 

the exception to this contracting gallery 

scene. Directors Anna Grigson and Maria 

Grimaldi moved their highly regarded 

Paddington gallery to expanded premises 

in Redfern in late 2019. They continue to 

represent a spectrum of established glass 

artists, as well as artists working in ceramics 

and most recently fibre. Glass artists who took 

part in Avanti, Sabbia’s opening exhibition 

at its new premises were Galia Amsel, Clare 

Belfrage, Lisa Cahill, Christine Cathie, Cobi 

Cockburn, Mel Douglas, Ben Edols and Kathy 

Elliott, Tim Edwards, Brenden Scott French, 

Jessica Loughlin, Jenni Kemarre Martiniello, 

Nick Mount, Emma Varga and Nick Wirdnam. 

The establishment of online gallery Australian 

Contemporary, by former Kirra Galleries, 

Melbourne manager Suzanne Brett is also 

of note. This online gallery features works 

by a wide range of artists, many formerly 

represented by Kirra. Internationally, Adrian 

Sassoon, London, represents Australian glass 

artists Clare Belfrage, Tim Edwards and Giles 

Bettison. In the USA the most important 

dealer gallery for Australian glass artists is 

now William Traver, Seattle, representing 

Belfrage, Edwards, Ben Edols/Kathy Elliott, 

Nadège Desgenétez and Jeremy Lepisto. 

If the preceding account of diverse 

approaches to contemporary glass practice in 

the face of gallery closures and the portent of 

changes in training institutions points to a 

future direction it is towards an expanded 

field of practice — ranging across 

collaborations between glass artists/artisans 

and other creative practitioners and 

designers; the taking on of public art 

Left: Jeremy Lepisto, Structure 2 (from the Aspect Series), 2018 

Photo: Rob Little 

Above: Ben Edols and Kathy Eliott, Made Strong by the Sea, 2019 

Photo: Greg Piper

commissions; and participating in 

contemporary art exhibitions and 

biennales. An exemplar of this approach 

is Canberra based artist Lisa Cahill, who has 

undertaken a number of major public and 

architectural commissions for clients including 

Tiffany and Co. stores in Melbourne, Sydney, 

Hong Kong and Shanghai, the Fairmont Hotel, 

Pittsburgh USA, and a private residence by 

Peter Stutchbury Architecture in the Blue 

Mountains. In April 2018 The Rising Sun 

sculpture, commissioned for the Sir John 

Monash Centre, Villers-Bretonneux France, 

to commemorate the centenary of the end 

of World War I, was officially opened by the 

Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull. 

Over the past two years indigenous artist 

Yhonnie Scarce has achieved an astounding 

level of creative achievement and 

recognition through working in an expanded 

field of contemporary artistic practice with 

glass as its core. Scarce, who currently lives 

in Melbourne, was born in Woomera and 

belongs to the Kokatha and Nukunu people. 

She first started working in glass as part of 

a Bachelor of Visual Art at the University of 

South Australia. Almost from the outset she 

developed the creative signature of blown 

glass forms, especially the bush banana and 

yam, as signifiers of a resilient indigenous 

culture. She has created monumental works 

using multiples of these and other blown 

glass forms that she imbues with 

metaphorical significance relational to the 

indigenous cultural narrative. Scarce often 

works with the JamFactory glass team to 

create the components for major projects 

such as her recent Architecture Commission 

Lisa Cahill, The Rising Sun, 2018 

Photo: Tim Williams 

38

for the National Gallery of Victoria, In 

Absence, which was created by Scarce in 

collaboration with architectural practice 

Edition Office. In Absence is a towering 

blackened timber wall, curved to evoke the 

design of traditional eel traps. The interior is 

adorned with 1600 black glass yams, signifiers 

of indigenous sustainable food production, in 

denial of the longstanding myth of terra nullius. 

In 2018 Scarce received the Kate Challis RAKA 

Award and exhibited in Sydney Contemporary. 

At the time of writing, her most recent project 

is an installation in the Dead House, Botanic 

Garden of Adelaide, for the 2020 Adelaide 

Biennial, Monster Theatres. Component glass 

works for this installation, designed and 

developed by Scarce, were blown at 

JamFactory by Studio Head Kristel Britcher, 

and Glass Studio alumni Drew Spangenberg 

and Madeline Prowd. Scarce has said she is 

seeking to evoke the monstrous acts of 

nineteenth century Scottish physician and 

Adelaide city coroner, William Ramsay Smith, 

who illicitly dissected and collected Aboriginal 

remains. In February 2020 Scarce was 

awarded the Yalingwa Fellowship valued at 

$60,000, a partnership between TarraWarra 

Museum, Australian Centre for Contemporary 

Art and Creative Victoria to support 

indigenous artists living and working 

in Victoria. 

A note of caution remains. While the current 

scenario is open to many possibilities, to 

go down the path of reducing the skilled 

practitioner to the role of an artisan helping 

to realise the creative ideas of other less 

skilled artists and designers, would be an 

historically retrograde step in denial of the 

internationally acclaimed highest artistic 

achievements of the Australian and New 

Zealand studio glass movement in recent 

decades. Fortunately, it is possible to discern 

a welcome momentum and energy as the 

latest generation evolve creative strategies 

to address just what it means to be a 

contemporary artist working in the field 

of glass. 

Margot Osborne 

Adelaide, February 2020 

Author’s note: 

The views expressed in this essay are those of the 

author alone and should not be construed in any way 

as expressing a position held by JamFactory, its staff 

and board, or by the judges of the FUSE Glass Prize. 

This essay was written before the closing date for 

entries in the 2020 FUSE Glass Prize and hence is blind 

to both the entrants and to the entire judging process. 

Acknowledgments: 

Margot wishes to thank the following people who 

shared their knowledge and sent information that was 

used in this essay: Brian Parkes and Margaret Hancock 

Davis of JamFactory, Gabriella Bisetto, UniSA, Aimee 

Frodsham, Canberra Glassworks, Kate Nixon, Ausglass, 

Kate Cornwall and Heather Olesen, New Zealand 

Society of Artists in Glass, Clare Belfrage, Claudia 

Borella, Nadège Desgenétez, Tim Edwards, Jessica 

Loughlin and Tom Moore. 

About the author: 

Dr Margot Osborne is the author of five books on 

contemporary art and craft, comprising Australian 

Glass Today (2005), SALA Monographs on Nick 

Mount (2002), Giles Bettison (2014), the Object 

Living Treasures monograph on Jeff Mincham 

(2009) and Liz Williams: Body language (2016). 

She has a PhD in art history from the University of 

Adelaide and is currently writing and editing an 

anthology on the history of the Adelaide art 

scene since 1939. 

i It was announced after the deadline for this essay that the 

winner of the Tom Malone Prize 2020 is Mel Douglas for her 

five part glass on paper series, Tonal Value, 2019. 

ii For a more detailed account refer to Rebecca Freezer’s 

article on Ninuku Arts in JamFactory’s online magazine 

Marmalade. 

Yhonnie Scarce and Edition Office, In Absence, 2019 

Photo: Benjamin Hosking 

40

Emerging Category Finalists

Hamish Donaldson 

Growing up in a family of glass makers, 

Hamish Donaldson was always inspired to 

make. Donaldson is a third generation studio 

glass artist. His Scottish grandparents 

were masters in the craft of glass cutting 

and engraving, inspiring his mother Eileen 

Gordon’s journey into glass blowing. His 

mother in turn taught Donaldson to blow 

glass at the family’s 60-year-old Gordon 

Studio in Red Hill, Victoria. 

Donaldson was a Glass Studio Associate 

at JamFactory from 2018 to 2019. He has 

completed masterclasses at Pilchuck Glass 

School, Washington; Cam Ocaği Vakf (Glass 

Furnace Foundation), Turkey; and Canberra 

Glassworks. In 2019, Donaldson began 

working with Ninuku Arts in the remote 

indigenous community of Kalka in the 

Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) 

Lands to realise the Walka Waru (Warm 

Works) project as part of the 2019 Tarnanthi 

Festival. Donaldson remains an integral part 

of this ongoing initiative, continuing to 

visit and maintain relationships with 

the community. 

“This work is a visual representation of water 

towers within the APY Lands. These towers 

are scattered within the communities and 

have tapped into the water table since 

early colonisation. The rampant modern 

consumption of natural resources has 

contributed to the disappearance of sacred, 

life sustaining waterholes. This work looks 

into the duality of these water towers being 

a source of life in a harsh landscape, whilst 

continuing to impact the environment. 

They are symbols of the oppression they 

have contained until today. The void of the 

table also acknowledges the empty space 

containing these issues within modern 

‘Australia’, attempting to bring these issues 

to light before they fade back into the 

background, becoming part of 

the furniture.” 

44

Water Table #1, 2019 

blown glass, silky oak timber, 695 x 380 x 390 

Photo: Pippy Mount

Billy James Crellin 

& Bastien Thomas 

Billy James Crellin is a designer and glassmaker 

based on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. 

Crellin has a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 

Photomedias (Hons) (2012) from Sydney 

College of the Arts. Crellin’s technical 

experience was established across 

organisations throughout Europe including 

the Academy of Arts Architecture & Design, 

Prague (UMPRUM); Cesty Skla/ Ways of glass, 

Czech Republic; Berlin Glas e.V. and Bild-Werk 

Fraunenau, Germany. He has trained with 

glassmaker Ondřej Strnadel at Valešské Meziříči 

Glassworks, Czech Republic and designer and 

glassblower Erik Meaker at Jyderup Højskole, 

Denmark. His training in hot-glass was further 

developed as a JamFactory Glass Studio 

Associate from 2017 to 2018. Alongside 

designer Eva Novakova, Crellin heads glass 

tableware brand Studio Dokola which aims to 

bring hand-made functional glassware to the 

forefront of Australian design. Correspondingly, 

Crellin’s conceptual work is significantly object 

focused, in his pursuit of finding the 

intersection between industrial and artistic 

frameworks of practice. 

“Veil is the coming together of Thomas 

and Crellin’s practice. Two separate entities, 

they have merged artistically to formulate 

a combined vision of the material. 

Recognising the strength of working in 

groups within the contemporary glass 

movement, they endeavour to open up 

the working relationship that typically 

underscores the medium of hot-glass. Their 

partnership first developed during a 2019 

residency at GlazenHuis, Belgium. Lending 

from one another a responsiveness and 

improvisation with hot-glass, a combined 

set of sculptural techniques, alongside an 

overarching architectural, geometric style. 

Referencing the veil technique – found in 

both glassmaking and fine art practices – this 

work considers the influence of the concealed 

bubble within the final form. The polarity of 

the shape’s hard geometry against its soft 

deformation – induced during the final stages 

of making by rapidly inflating the obscured 

bubble at the centre of the piece.” 

French-born Bastien Thomas was trained as a 

factory glassblower at Arc International, France 

and Klart Glass, Norway. His desire to follow a 

more artistic path led him to Australia, where 

alongside Crellin, he was a Glass Studio 

Associate at JamFactory from 2017 to 2018. 

Inspired by history, archaeology and geology, 

Thomas utilises both hot and cold processes 

in his practice, experimenting with colour and 

texture to mimic the natural effects of time 

against objects and materials. Thomas was a 

finalist in the Emerging Category of the FUSE 

Glass Prize 2018 as well as in the 2020 Milano 

Vetro -35 competition. While Thomas continues 

his glass blowing career in Europe, he maintains 

a strong connection with the Australian 

glass movement. 

46

Veil, 2019 

sculpted hot-glass, sandblasted, hand-pumiced, dimensions variable 

Photo: Michael Haines

Alexandra Hirst 

While obtaining her Bachelor of Visual Arts 

(Sculpture) at Sydney College of the Arts 

(2015), Alexandra Hirst participated in an 

International Exchange in Visual Art at Alfred 

University, New York in 2013. Instantly she 

was drawn to the complexity of glass as a 

material and the collaborative aspect of 

glassblowing. Hirst has continued to develop 

her technical skills through courses at the 

Australian National University, Canberra and 

by completing a Master of Fine Art (Glass) 

(2019) at the Edinburgh College of Art at the 

University of Edinburgh. Here she explored 

the integration of digital processes in glass 

blowing and in creating large-scale glass 

objects. In 2020 she commenced the 

Glass Studio Associate Training Program 

at JamFactory. 

“Each of these Building Blocks holds a unique 

internal organ derived from a different 3D 

modelling technique. Much like our bodies, 

3D modelling uses primary processes; lofting, 

extruding, revolving; that form the core of 

the program’s functionality. To represent the 

vastly different form-giving potential of these 

processes, each organ is digitally subtracted 

from a cube and 3D printed to create 

burnout moulds. Cast in clear glass, the 

blocks are brought to a high polish to 

reveal these internal structures. Unified by 

a consistent external form, each building 

block represents simple digital processes in 

a manner that would be very difficult to 

replicate by hand. The work highlights the 

potential for digital technologies to open 

up new possibilities in glass craft.” 

48

Building Blocks, 2018 

glass, 210 x 70 x 70 

Photo: the artist

Erica Izard 

Erica Izard is an emerging artist based in 

Sydney. Originally a radiographer and 

sonographer, Izard retrained at the Sydney 

College of the Arts, obtaining a Master of 

Fine Arts (2019). During this time she was the 

recipient of a scholarship to the Pilchuck Glass 

School, Washington in 2013. Izard’s first solo 

exhibition As it is right now. . . was shown at 

AIRspace Projects, Sydney in 2020. Her work 

Homage to Grief, 2019 was awarded the Plinth 

Prize as part of the 2019 Woollahra Small 

Sculpture Prize. Previously Izard won the 2016 

St George 3D Art Prize for the physics of rain, 

2016 and the Mosman Art Gallery’s In Situ 13 

Installation Award for her glass work Wave 

Particle Duality, 2013. 

“Emotional Tide is a work that reflects the 

personal journey of discovery of self. It was 

created during a time of emotional turbulence 

where it became clear to me that to continue 

to grow I must let go of old ideas to make 

room for the new. The application of glass 

powder and water was gestural and akin to 

a visual diary of that time when each panel 

was created.” 

50

Emotional Tide, 2020 

glass, lightbox (perspex, wood, LED strip light), 260 x 2700 x 200 

Photo: Greg Piper

Ayano Yoshizumi 

Originally from Japan, Ayano Yoshizumi is a 

glass artist based in Adelaide. Ayano treats 

her glass sculptures as three dimensional 

canvases, using glass blowing, kiln-forming 

and enamelling to strike a unique balance 

between art and craft. Her conceptual works 

are influenced by Fauvism in her strong 

and expressive use of colour as well as the 

serendipitous nature of the hot-glass medium. 

Ayano holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts, 

Industrial, Interior and Craft Design (2014) 

from Musashino Art University, Tokyo and 

completed the Glass Certification Studies 

Program at Toyama Institute of Glass Art in 

2016. She won the Takaoka Craft Competition 

and the Best Student Prize at the Toyama 

Institute of Glass Art in 2016. She became 

the second Asialink Artist in Residence at 

Canberra Glassworks in 2017 and joined 

the JamFactory Glass Studio Associate 

Program in 2019. 

“Through my practice I am interested in 

the use of glass as an expressive material 

as well as using space and colour as primary 

tools for considering the work as a threedimensional 

canvas. The building of both 

internal and external spaces using blown 

glass and painting, creates a constructed, 

transparent space. The Japanese concept 

ma, meaning negative space, identifies the 

aesthetic of each object’s internal and 

external space. In essence, it is ma that 

creates the depth and complexity of the 

object itself.” 

52

Icon #2003, 2020 

blown, sculpted, hot-fused, engraved glass, found objects 

170 x 300 x 110; 170 x 300 x 140 Photo: Pippy Mount

Madisyn Zabel 

Madisyn Zabel is a Canberra-based artist 

who investigates the growing dialogue 

between craft and digital technology. 

Using glass and mixed media, she 

extrapolates the dynamic relationships 

between three-dimensional objects and 

their two-dimensional interpretations. 

Zabel’s fascination with the visually 

deceptive qualities of glass began when 

she discovered the Necker cube - an 

optical illusion created by Swiss 

crystallographer, Louis Albert Necker. 

Zabel has a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Glass) 

(Hons) (2015) from the Australian National 

University School of Art & Design, Canberra. 

She has participated in residencies at 

Berlin Glas e.V., Canberra Glassworks and 

the Glass Studio at the Chrysler Museum 

of Art, Norfolk, USA. Zabel was awarded 

Warm Glass UK’s Glass Prize (Bullseye 

Artists) in 2016 and the Jutta Cuny-Franz 

Foundation’s Talent Award from the Museum 

Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf in 2017. Her work 

has been shown internationally – including 

the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou; Berlin 

Glas e.V and the Corning Museum of Glass, 

New York. Between 2019 and 2020 Wagga 

Wagga Art Gallery exhibited Perpetual 

Reversal, a commissioned installation of 

Zabel’s work. 

“Within my practice, I explore ideas of 

perception and illusion through transparent 

solid glass. Since my studies, I have been 

fascinated by the illusionistic qualities of 

glass and take particular inspiration from 

Louis Albert Necker’s Necker cube - a simple 

wire-frame drawing of a cube that is a bistable 

illusion with multiple interpretations. Through 

a series of geometric glass shapes, I attempt 

to create my own three-dimensional versions 

of the Necker cube. The shifting quality of the 

work is activated through both perception 

and the vantage point of the viewer. Each 

piece is created from solid, transparent, glass 

billets that are cut, ground and hand-finished 

to a satin surface, creating a luminous quality.” 

54

Illuminate III, 2020 

coldworked glass, 70 x 500 x 400 

Photo: the artist

Established Category Finalists

Kate Baker 

Kate Baker is an artist whose practice merges 

photo, print and digital media technologies 

with studio glass. Before graduating from 

the Glass Workshop at the Australian 

National University School (ANU) of Art & 

Design, Canberra with a Bachelor of Visual 

Arts (1999), Baker studied photography, 

printmaking and sculpture. Through 

her work, Baker creates a complex 

human-environment layered with physical, 

psychological and emotional strata, inviting 

the viewer to consider the nuanced spaces 

between the self and one’s experience. 

In 2017 Baker returned to ANU as a PhD 

candidate. Her interdisciplinary research 

focusing on studio glass and photo 

media practice. 

“Between Intimacy and Trespass has 

grown out of an ongoing investigation 

into the ethereal figure within abstracted 

space. The works are intended as emotional 

and psychological environments in which 

the viewer can be held both visually 

and viscerally.” 

Baker was awarded the Hindmarsh Glass 

Prize in 2018 and was selected for New 

Glass Now, an international survey of 

contemporary glass, at the Corning Museum 

of Glass, New York. Baker’s work has been 

widely exhibited internationally including 

at the Toyama Museum of Glass, Japan; the 

Palm Springs Art Museum, California; the 

New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe and 

the Venice Glass Biennale. 

58

Between Intimacy and Trepass #4, 2019 

hand and digital print on silver mirror, 1000 x 1200 x 30 

Photo: the artist

Clare Belfrage 

With a focus on rhythm, pattern and texture, 

inspired by experiences in the natural world, 

Clare Belfrage has created a remarkable 

body of work over her thirty-year career. 

Melbourne-born and Adelaide-based, her 

international reputation as a leader in her 

field comes from her innovation and 

originality, utilising her formidable skills 

in detailed and complex glass drawing on 

sculptural glass forms. She has maintained 

a vibrant practice for over twenty-five years. 

She has been an important part of artists’ 

communities particularly in Adelaide and 

Canberra, including the glass based studio 

blue pony, of which she is a founding member, 

JamFactory’s Glass Studio and Canberra 

Glassworks where she played the pivotal 

role of Creative Director from 2009 to 2013. 

“As an artist, my point of view is often 

looking from close up. The big feeling that 

‘small’ gives me is intimate and powerful. 

The industry in nature, its rhythm and 

energy, dramatic and delicate still holds 

my fascination as does the language and 

processes of glass. With its origins in, a 

place, this piece is a cluster of textures, 

patterns and rhythms, marking out the 

movement of time in the natural world.” 

Belfrage has achieved significant recognition 

for her work. In 2018 she was the South 

Australian Living Artist (SALA) Festival feature 

artist and the subject of the festival’s annual 

monograph. Also in 2018 she was included in 

JamFactory’s Icon exhibition series – an annual 

solo exhibition celebrating the achievements 

of South Australia’s most influential artists 

working in craft-based media. JamFactory 

ICON Clare Belfrage: A Measure of Time is 

touring nationally until 2021. She was awarded 

the Tom Malone Glass Prize by the Art Gallery 

of Western Australia in 2011 and 2005 and in 

2016 she was the inaugural Winner of 

JamFactory’s FUSE Glass Prize. Belfrage’s 

work is represented in major public collections 

throughout the world including: the National 

Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Museum 

of Arts and Sciences, Sydney; the Corning 

Museum of Glass, New York; Ebeltoft Glass 

Museum, Denmark, and the Niijima Glass 

Museum, Japan. 

Clare Belfrage is represented by Sabbia Gallery, Sydney. 

60

Elements of a Place, 2020 

blown glass with cane drawing, coldworked, 560 x 920 x 220 

Photo: Pippy Mount

Penny Byrne 

Through her sculptural practice, Melbournebased 

artist Penny Byrne applies her keen 

sense of politics to interrogate whether 

individuals have any true agency or ability 

to determine ‘truth’ when it is has become 

intertwined with subjectivity and 

sentimentality and blurred by ‘fake news’ 

and the effects of mass participation. She 

is concerned with the state of the world and 

our place within it. Through her work she asks 

us to consider where we stand and how we 

feel, never preaching, she prefers to gently 

guide us to a deeper understanding of our 

times. She is not afraid to tackle the big issues 

head on, often with wry humour and wit, and 

always with a deeply considered and 

intelligent compassion. 

Byrne’s background in ceramics conservation 

and law informs her practice. Her sculptural 

works are held in public collections including 

the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the 

National Gallery of Victoria and the 

Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. In 2015 she 

was exhibited in the Venice Biennale 

exhibition Glasstress Gotika at Palazzo 

Franchetti on the Grand Canal. 

“It’s no mistake that the title of this work 

starts with a hashtag. #StandwithHongKong 

has hundreds of thousands of posts on social 

media and is still trending even today. I made 

this work during my residency at Canberra 

Glassworks in November 2019. It is my 

response to the massive protests that took 

place in Hong Kong for many months last 

year, and is my way of showing my support 

for the protesters. To protect themselves 

from riot police, firing tear gas and rubber 

bullets, many protesters resorted to wearing 

protection that was readily available in 

hardware stores - yellow construction 

helmets, goggles and grey gas masks with 

pink filters. During my residency, I regularly 

posted progress images on Instagram 

(@pennb). I received many comments from 

people in Hong Kong thanking me for making 

the work. They appreciated that they were 

not alone, and that the world was watching.” 

Gaffer: Tom Rowney 

Cold Work: Catherine Newton 

Metal Smith: Sean Booth 

Created with support provided by Canberra Glass 

Works, through the Australia Council for the Arts Visual 

Arts and Crafts Strategy. 

62

#StandwithHongKong, 2019 

glass, mild steel, 440 x 310 x 350 

Photo: Brenton McGeachie

Cobi Cockburn 

The practice of glass artist Cobi Cockburn 

is dedicated to the continual refinement of 

self-expression and understanding. Cockburn 

explores ideas of space and illusionistic depth, 

through playing opacity against transparency 

and using traditional techniques in 

appropriated and contemporary ways. 

She creates floating glass panels, which 

perform as minimal interventions and 

windows into other spaces. Her reference to 

the physical landscape is always apparent, 

however she often refers to areas of 

abstraction as a metaphor to define the 

essential relationship between self and space. 

Choosing glass as her primary material, she 

has formed a relationship with the medium 

over the past 20 years, which continues to 

evolve. To Cockburn, glass offers a unique 

language; embodying both a 2D and 3D 

presence, acting as a portal into an 

otherwise unreachable plane, a place of 

personal meaning, accessible to, yet 

unchangeable by others. 

“Murmuration (light) explores the silence in 

synchronicity and the beauty of unspoken 

energy. Highlighting the potential of colour 

and abstraction as stimulative devices to spur 

emotion beyond the constraints of reality, I 

delve into the intertwined relationships of 

art, geometry and spirituality. Both defined 

and balanced the underlying grid pattern 

represents a matrix of material and 

immaterial elements – a blending of the 

physical and spiritual that equalises feeling. 

There is no higher or lower ground. Its energy 

is uniform and woven together, generating a 

vibration of matter – a metaphor for human 

psychology and understanding. Through 

compositions of soft colours and layered lines, 

I explore this intricate construct of innate 

feelings and timeless motion that references 

a form of silent faith for the artist.” 

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 and the 

Ranamok Glass Prize in 2006. 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. 

Cobi Cockburn is represented by Sabbia 

Gallery, Sydney. 

64

Murmuration (Light), 2019 

glass, 1150 x 1150 x 40 

Photo: Greg Piper

Nadège Desgenétez 

French-born Nadège Desgenétez is a visual 

artist, glassblower and an educator. Her 

career has spanned across Europe, North 

America, Asia and Australia. In France, 

Desgenétez obtained a Bachelor of Arts 

(Industrial Design) (1991) from Université 

de Caen Normandie, before continuing her 

glass training at Centre Européen de 

Recherche et de Formation aux Arts 

Vérriers (CERFAV) between 1993 and 1995. 

After working in studios in Europe, and 

travelling to the United States as a teaching 

assistant to Italian maestro Lino Tagliapietra, 

she moved to Seattle to attend the Pilchuck 

Glass School with a full scholarship in 1998. 

Here, she worked with artists such as Dale 

Chihuly, Benjamin Moore, Dante Marioni, Dan 

Dailey and Preston Singletary. Since 2005, 

Desgenétez has remained a lecturer at the 

Glass Workshop of the Australian National 

University, Canberra. 

Desgenétez has been the recipient of 

several prizes and awards including the 

Prix de la Vocation from the Fondation 

Marcel Bleustein Blanchet (2004); the Prix 

d’Honneur de la Fondation de France (1997) 

and the Pilchuck Glass School SAXE Award 

(2004 and 1997.) She has participated in 

residencies at Northlands Creative Glass, 

UK; Pittsburgh Glass Centre, USA and the 

Tacoma Museum of Glass, USA. Most recently 

her work was included in the 2019 exhibition 

New Glass Now at the Corning Museum of 

Glass, New York. 

“My work investigates ideas of connection 

to place. It is informed by my experience as 

a migrant and mines references to the body, 

familiar landscapes and the process of glass 

blowing. I aim to explore and convey 

experiences of presence and interrelation 

with place by harnessing the ways the 

material interacts with light, colour and 

space through form, surface and reflection.” 

Lucent, 2018 

blown, sculpted glass, mirrored, carved, 

hand-sanded, plywood base, steel bracket 

1590 x 600 x 300 Photo: Greg Piper 

66

Wendy Fairclough 

New Zealand-born glass artist Wendy 

Fairclough is based in the Adelaide Hills. She 

completed a Bachelor of Visual Art (Sculpture 

and Printmaking) (1991) and a Bachelor of 

Applied Arts (Glass) (2000) from the South 

Australian School of Art at the University 

of South Australia. Drawing from this 

background of printmaking, sculpture and 

applied arts, Fairclough creates compositions 

and installations using blown and cast glass; 

cast bronze and aluminium; and found 

objects. She focuses on what we have in 

common regardless of culture and religion. 

This focus has led her to artist residencies 

in China in 2018, New Zealand in 2016, 

and India in 2012. 

Previously a finalist in the inaugural 2016 FUSE 

Glass Prize, Fairclough was nominated for the 

inaugural Tom Malone Prize, awarded by the 

Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2003. 

She was nominated for the Ranamok Glass 

Prize five times between 2002 and 2009. 

Fairclough has exhibited throughout Asia, 

New Zealand, USA, Canada and Australia. 

Her work is represented in public collections 

nationally including the National Gallery of 

Australia, Canberra; the Australian National 

Art Glass Collection, Wagga Wagga, NSW; 

the Australian National University 

Collection, Canberra and the Museum of 

Australian Democracy, Canberra. 

Internationally, Fairclough’s work is held in 

the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa 

Tongarewa (Te Papa), Wellington; and in the 

United States, at the Toledo Museum of Art, 

Ohio and the New Zealand Ministry of 

Foreign Affairs, Los Angeles. 

“I‘m interested in what we humans have in 

common - regardless of culture, race, or 

religious beliefs. I’m looking for the 

connecting place where we can recognize 

our sameness. Experiences of home; sense of 

belonging; food; work; ritual; stories; myths; 

all feed my curiosity and influence what I 

make and what material I use to make it 

with. It matters deeply to me that my work 

is accessible to people from different walks 

of life and that they can bring their own 

meanings to it. The now endangered New 

Zealand tuna (Maori for longfin eel) are of 

great significance to Maori culturally, 

nutritionally and economically. Many 

Pakeha New Zealanders also feel a strong 

connection with them and almost always 

immediately relate a fond memory relating 

to them whenever mentioned. Both cultures 

enjoy them as a food source.” 

Wendy Fairclough is represented by Sabbia Gallery, 

Sydney; Masterworks, Auckland, NZ; New Zealand 

Glassworks, Whanganui, NZ. 

68

Tuna Heke/Migrating Eel, 2020 

cast lead crystal, 80 x 600 x 1040 


Marcel Hoogstad Hay 

Marcel Hoogstad Hay is an Adelaide-based 

artist and designer working primarily with 

blown glass. In most of his work, Hoogstad 

Hay draws from traditional Venetian cane 

techniques, exploring and creating complex 

patterns and optical effects in glass. 

Hoogstad Hay received a Bachelor of 

Visual Arts (Hons) in 2012 from the Glass 

Workshop at the Australian National 

University School of Art & Design, Canberra. 

During 2013 and 2014, Hoogstad Hay was 

a JamFactory Glass Studio Associate. He 

completed a residency at Berlin Glas e.V. in 

2015 and in 2016 he worked at Do Studio in 

Oaxaca, Mexico as a technician and hot-shop 

assistant. In 2018 he was an instructor in 

hot-glass at Sydney College of the Arts, and 

spent two months in the USA as a scholarship 

student at the Penland School of Craft, North 

Carolina and as a Rosenberg Resident at 

Salem State University, Massachusetts. In 

2020 Hoogstad Hay showed a body of new 

work alongside that of fellow 2020 FUSE 

Glass Prize Finalist, Madeline Prowd in the 

exhibition Distorted Trajectories at Craft ACT. 

“I am interested in ideas that appear in 

astrophysics and quantum mechanics and 

my work addresses the ideas of spatial and 

temporal relativity, and our perceptions of 

spacetime. In this piece, Superposition II, 

I am referencing diagrams that illustrate these 

phenomena, and attempting to question the 

preconceived notions of time as linear and 

singular. I have used sections of cane 

to illustrate the granular and staggered 

nature of things as they appear at a quantum 

scale, and have tried to address the 

indeterminate nature of our universe by 

creating multiple, overlapping layers that 

represent superpositions of spacetime.” 

70

Superposition II, 2019 

blown glass, kiln formed glass, 465 x 845 x 10 


Jeremy Lepisto 

American-born Jeremy Lepisto is a sculptural 

glass artist now based in Canberra. He has a 

Bachelor of Fine Arts from Alfred University, 

New York (1997). He majored in Glass and 

Metals (with minors in Art History and Art 

Education). In 2019 he completed his PhD 

in Sculpture at the Australian National 

University School of Art & Design, 

Canberra. Lepisto’s artwork is inspired by 

our separate histories, our intersecting 

connections and the constructed elements 

of everyday surroundings. 

Lepisto began his career working at the 

Bullseye Glass Co., Portland, Oregon as a 

Production Manager Apprentice, which 

informed his knowledge in glass kiln-forming. 

In 2001, while remaining in Portland, Lepisto 

left Bullseye Glass Co. to start Studio Ramp 

LLC, an independent, custom glass kilnforming 

fabrication studio. The studio 

translated designs by artists and architects 

into glass from concept to completion, 

simultaneously Lepisto exhibited his work 

and lectured internationally, while serving 

eight years on the Board of Directors for the 

Glass Art Society (GAS). After re-locating to 

Canberra, Lepisto established Jeremy Lepisto 

Projects in Queanbeyan, New South Wales. 

“Within The Full Extent, a steel structure 

stretches across the farthest corners of its 

interior. It is reminiscent of a perpendicular 

portion of a construction crane. This item 

connects two illustrated and imagined 

cityscapes. Amongst the buildings rendered 

in each scene stands a single construction 

crane that is visibly missing a vertical section 

of its form. It can be inferred that the 

contents of this container could be utilised 

to complete the contour of only one of the 

illustrated cranes. This work looks to expose 

the typically unseen real-world objects that 

are held within shipping containers to better 

examine their agency. The objects held 

by containers (even if still in passage) 

connect the timelines and prosperity of 

their endpoints without yet existing in 

either destination.” 

Jeremy Lepisto is represented by Beaver 

Galleries, Canberra. 

72

The Extent (From the Container Series), 2018 

kilnformed, coldworked glass, fabricated, black-oxide coated steel 

280 x 254 x 762 Photo: Rob Little

Madeline Prowd 

Madeline Prowd is an Adelaide-based glass 

artist and designer. Her current practice 

is influenced by traditional Italian 

glassblowing techniques and the technical 

proficiency inherent in the process of making. 

Prowd completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts 

(2009) at the Australian National University 

School of Art & Design, Canberra. She was a 

Glass Studio Associate at JamFactory from 

2010 to 2011, where she continues to work as a 

Studio Glass Technician. 

Since receiving a scholarship to attend Italian 

maestro Davide Salvadore’s Masterclass at 

Washington’s Pilchuck Glass School in 2010, 

Prowd maintains a close connection with the 

school, notably receiving its SAXE Award 

in 2014 and returning as a Craftsperson in 

Residence in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Prowd 

has undertaken residencies at Canberra 

Glassworks, Berlin Glas e.V. and The Glass 

Factory in Boda Glasbruk, Sweden. In 2019 

she was a finalist for the Klaus Moje Glass 

Award. Prowd received a Judges’ 

Commendation for her entry into the 2018 

Adelaide Parklands Art Prize and has been 

nominated for the Waterhouse Natural 

Science Art Prize four times since 2012. 

“Long fascinated by the technical aspects of 

pattern making in glass, and the extensive 

possibilities of cane work, Shift: 021 is part of 

a new body of work exploring the intriguing 

manipulations of light and optics, texture and 

pattern. This new work showcases my shifting 

focus from recreating literal representations 

of patterns in nature to the subject of pattern 

itself. Exploiting the unique optical qualities 

of the material, I aim to display an absorbing 

landscape of tactile patterning. Utilising the 

bold contrast of white line-work over black, 

with the addition of clear glass canes to 

bend light and perception of the underlying 

pattern. The result elevates pattern 

from merely a decorative afterthought 

to the integral reason for making.” 

Shift: 021, 2019 

blown glass, cane, 500 x 250 x 190 

Photo: Pippy Mount 

74

Yusuke Takemura 

Yusuke Takemura is a sculptor from Osaka, 

Japan. Yusuke holds a Bachelor of Visual 

Arts (Glass) (2006) from Kurashiki University 

of Science and the Arts, Japan. He moved to 

Australia, completing a Master of Studio Arts 

(2009) at the Sydney College of the Arts. 

Yusuke’s innovative cutting glass methods 

are a daring fusion of traditional techniques 

and contemporary knowledge, designed to 

translate ideas relating to human experience, 

memories and history. These intriguing 

poetic forms subtly investigate the infinite 

relationship between the bodily and sentient 

aspects of human existence. 

Yusuke’s works have been recognised and 

shortlisted for prestigious sculpture prizes 

and glass art prizes around Australia. He has 

exhibited internationally at SOFA Chicago; 

Art16, London and the Affordable Art Fair, 

Hong Kong. In 2014 Yusuke received a grant 

from The Japan Foundation, New York to 

attended the Glass Art Society (GAS) 

conference in Chicago. 

“Isolating myself in the Australian bush elicits 

a spring of self-understanding. Experiencing 

detachment from civilization leads me back 

to a renewed awareness of connections and 

a sense of belonging within society. Seeing 

beyond Silence is inspired by the radical 

development of information technology, 

which at once offers a closer proximity to the 

world while connecting individuals on social 

networks. Accumulated personal data gives 

rise to the sensation of a virtual image of 

myself; a self which interfaces with a greater 

number and variety of people without any 

physical connection occurring. The vessel 

is evocative of an abstracted human figure. 

The object offers a complex surface created 

through grinding and polishing, yielding an 

ethereal shell perforated by organic-shaped 

voids and interlaced with a continuous optical 

fibre. Seeking dialogue with my work I am 

compelled to query what connection means 

to me and how I belong to the elaborate 

networks of our society.” 

Yusuke Takemura is represented by Gallery 

Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney. 

Seeing Beyond Silence, 2019 

glass, optical fibre, stainless wire, sphere, gold leaves 

1260 x 30 x 30 

Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert 

76

Hiromi Tango 

Hiromi Tango is a Japanese-Australian artist 

whose work spans sculpture, drawings, 

photography, installation and performance. 

Hiromi is dedicated to generating healing 

conversations through arts engagement. 

Her practice has become increasingly focused 

on exploring neuroscientific concepts through 

arts engagement, posing questions around 

neuroplasticity, empathy and epigenetics in her 

quest to effect healing and well-being through 

arts. Often using metaphors from nature to 

represent brain processes, her works develop 

through a combination of research, reflection 

and ritual. Personal experiences – whether her 

own or those of community participants - drive 

her exploration of specific ideas and areas of 

research, such as dementia and aging, child 

development or traumatic emotional 

experiences. In this way, her work creates 

a bridge between scientific concepts and 

individual realities. 

“Heal - Mother considers our relationship to 

our environment, and each other, at a time 

when the world seems to be spiralling from 

one crisis to another. It has been inspired 

by my mother, who has remained steadfast 

and calm, in spite of facing many 

challenges throughout her life. Even now, 

as we are separated by closed borders, a 

collapsing economy, and rampant 

uncertainty, I can hear her voice quietly 

urging me to remain calm in the face of 

apparent catastrophe. Gently encircled by 

textiles made from kimono silk, the soft light 

and colours draw me back to my centre. 

My wish is to create the same calming 

influence for those around me, in such 

anxious times.” 

Hiromi has a Bachelor of Arts (Humanity 

and Culture of Arts) from Japan Women’s 

University, Tokyo (1998). Her works have 

been exhibited at major national institutions 

including the Art Gallery of New South Wales; 

the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of 

Modern Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, 

Sydney and the Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne 

as well as international art institutions and fairs. 

In 2016 Hiromi was included in the Adelaide 

Biennial of Australian Art: Magic Object at the 

Art Gallery of South Australia. In 2017 Hiromi 

was a recipient of the Sidney Myer Creative 

Fellowship and was a finalist for the Tom Bass 

Prize for Figurative Sculpture (2020); the 

Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize 

(2020); The Fischer’s Ghost Art Award (2019 

and 2016) and the 2018 Wynne Prize. 

Hiromi Tango is represented by 

Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney. 

78

Heal - Mother, 2020 

neon glass, acrylic coloured mirrors, silk kimono textile 

450 x 450 x 150 Photo: Aaron Anderson

Kathryn Wightman 

Kathryn Wightman began working with glass 

as a student at the University of Sunderland, 

UK where she obtained a Bachelor of Art 

(Glass and Ceramics) (2000), followed by a 

Master of Arts (glass) (2005). In 2006 she 

was awarded a Craft Council placement to 

assist in establishing her 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 

her research Wightman has undertaken work 

as a visiting lecturer at the University of 

Sunderland. She has also worked as a 

glassmaker at the National Glass Centre, 

Sunderland. In 2012 she 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 and 2018, 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. 

“Hundreds of hours of videos are uploaded 

to YouTube every minute. Around two billion 

monthly users access the website, including 

many children. As a mother of a young child 

and newborn, I am interested in 

scrutinizing this digitally connected world 

and the media it produces, which in turn 

informs the environment in which my children 

will grow up. The pattern recalls the familiar 

and reassuring designs of floral vintage 

wallpaper, intending to evoke feelings of 

security. The image transitions incrementally 

with patterning fading slowly from the top 

until it becomes uniformly green along the 

bottom edge. It mirrors an algorithmically 

generated web experience, beginning with 

the safe and familiar then slowly devolving 

into the strange, sinister and dangerous. 

Videos from YouTube are projected onto the 

work but only fragments can be discerned; 

the platform and its workings unable to be 

grasped solely through the content of the 

videos themselves.” 

80

Digital Parent, 2020 

sifted and sintered glass powder, 3660 x 5400 x 6 

Photo: Michael McKeagg

First Published in Adelaide, Australia in 2020. 

Published to coincide with the exhibition of 

finalists’ works for the 2020 FUSE Glass 

Prize, shown at JamFactory, Adelaide from 

18 May to 20 September 2020 and at the 

Australian Design Centre in Sydney from 

9 October to 18 November 2020. 

Published by JamFactory 

19 Morphett Street, Adelaide SA 5000 

jamfactory.com.au 

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 

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 978-0-6483290-8-4 

Catalogue Designer: Sophie Guiney 

Copy Editor: Rebecca Freezer 

Exhibition Curator: Margaret Hancock Davis 

All measurements have been given height 

before width before depth or height by diameter 

and have been rounded to the nearest millimetre. 

© JamFactory, 2020 

82

Marcel Hoogstad Hay, Superposition II (detail), 2019 


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 2020 

FUSE Glass Prize possible; Jim Carreker and 

Helen Carreker, the Hon Diana Laidlaw AM, 

Ian Wall AM and Pamela Wall OAM, 

David McKee AO and Pam McKee, 

Susan Armitage, Sonia Laidlaw, Trina Ross, 

the David and Dulcie Henshall Foundation 

and additional anonymous donors. 

JamFactory also acknowledges the generosity 

of the supporting sponsors and presenting 

partners for the 2020 FUSE Glass Prize. 

84

FUSE Glass Prize 2020 Catalogue

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