Artist Tim Edwards has gained the prestigious Tom Malone prize for Australian glass artwork with a get the job done that plays tricks with the viewer’s eye.
The winning operate, titled Ellipse #8, is a luminous blue sort 47cm tall and from some angles it is tough to notify irrespective of whether the glass is two- or a few-dimensional. The piece is 3D but not quite thick with a depth of just 8mm.
“I’m fascinated in notion, deception, and that location between 2D and 3D. A person coined the term two-and-a-half dimensional, which I like,” the artist mentioned.
It took about two hours to blow the piece with the help of assistants at the furnaces in Adelaide’s JamFactory. Edwards then spent one more 35 hours in his residence studio grinding fantastic ovals out of the glass utilizing significant-finish German stone and diamond applications.
The glass does not break all through this method, he claimed, simply because it’s cooled with h2o and glass is more durable than just one may possibly hope.
“It’s brittle, but it’s in fact very, extremely powerful … it is sound sufficient that you are not heading to split it,” he said.
Centered in South Australia, Edwards commenced as a ceramicist in advance of switching to glass and a vocation that has taken him all over the entire world, such as a commission at the Corning Museum of Glass in the US.
He concerns that funding cuts have still left university glass artwork training in a depressing state, but reported the JamFactory studio was “going gangbusters” and the expertise formulated there have been important for Australian glass art.
Expert-amount glass in Australia is solid, in accordance to Edwards, with gross sales increasing very well over and above craft-centered galleries.
He thinks fascination in glass blowing from outstanding modern day artists these kinds of as Patricia Piccinini and Tony Albert will lead to far more interest for the medium.
“We’re in a superior area and I imagine we’re going to hit a really good way in the following five to 10 yrs,” he said.
For the 20th anniversary of the $15,000 acquisitive prize, the 15 finalist items are on display along with profitable is effective from the preceding 19 a long time.
These incorporate art from the likes of Tom Moore, Jessica Loughlin, Nick Mount and Gabriella Bisetto.
The pieces are on show at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth from Friday right up until the conclude of July.
