Introduction
In this thesis I address two questions in relation to my own practice. The first is: How do we, as makers and/or viewers, engage with Australian studio glass? The second is: What is it about glass that generates our engagement? As my research based for those two questions I interview artists, gallery owners and directors, curators, collectors, and others[1] within and around the community of Australian studio glassmakers. I find currents of consensus, and that consensus directs this study. To place this consensus within a critical framework I also incorporate a range of writings including those of Roland Barthes, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Gilles Deleuze, Umberto Eco, Wolfgang Iser, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. My research leads me to Romanticism, which I use to argue a position for studio glass practice in the context of contemporary art practice.
To develop my argument I divide my thesis into two sections. In the first section of the thesis I analyse the power of narrative to engage the viewer and connote form within Australian studio glasswork. To unravel and examine narratives pertinent to studio glass I look at the significance of labels commonly used to place our work and practice into context. I then look at Australian studio glass in comparison to the contemporaneous emergence of conceptual art in Australia to discover any convergence in their narratives. Seeking an overarching context for studio glass within contemporary arts practice I then explore the relevance of Romanticism within the historic and contemporary narratives of Australian studio glass. I then use my painted portraits as practical evidence of the significance of gesture as I establish a dialogue between theoretical and material narratives of technical process, genre, identity and artistic sensibility. I end Section One of this thesis by exploring the relationship between the glasswork as object and the meaning taken from the multiple narratives that inform interpretation of a glasswork.
As studio glass practitioners we define our practice through medium by identifying ourselves strongly with glass. For this reason glass is central to the contextual positioning of our practice. In the second section of my thesis I examine the physical and psychological basis for our intellectual and aesthetic engagement with glass. I identify qualities of glass and its technical processes that extend our aesthetic experience beyond the tangible glass object both physically and psychologically through realising the potential of glass to expand, mutate and transcend object. I show that glass achieves this transcendence both through the glass object’s conceptual capacity to carry narratives at multiple levels and through the glass object’s physical ability to transmit light. I establish that these inherent qualities are utilised by contemporary art practitioners.
With reference to existing theories including those of Eco and Iser I examine openness in a glasswork, that is, a glass object’s availability for varied interpretation by its viewers. I discuss how this openness to interpretation provides the glasswork with poetic potential for multiple meaning, and how this openness remains over time, and within diverse contexts. In my analysis of openness I utilise the metaphor of the glass object as landscape. I make the following proposals: As with landscape, the receptiveness of a glass object to our imaginative projections provides us with the means to gain insight into our own psyche. We gain this insight as our perception of the glass object mutates in a continually evolving feedback loop between the work and ourselves. This occurs as a series of actions and reactions creating an event shaped and reshaped by our subjective response within the context of our situation in culture, time and place. This subjective response is the domain of affective engagement – romanticism.
I then approach glass with reference to the writings of Deleuze and present a methodology that utilises the forces inherent in the glassmaking process to achieve creative originality. Developing this methodology through the process of my glass casting, I posit an engagement with glass that is relevant to, and compatible with contemporary art practice. I support this positioning by referring to D. N. Rodowick's writings on the figural, arguing that it is through the figural that studio glass can affectively and deeply engage the maker and the viewer. This engagement occurs without direct representation, relying instead on the emotional projections with which the viewer structures form within the formlessness of the glass, thus opening the glass object as the projection of a viewer’s desire. This process is an exemplar of Romanticism and through this process the glass object becomes transcendent.
[1] Records of interviews are attached as transcriptions in a portable document format (PDF) in the Appendix. These transcriptions inform my enquiry and they substantially guide the content of my thesis.
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In this thesis I address two questions in relation to my own practice. The first is: How do we, as makers and/or viewers, engage with Australian studio glass? The second is: What is it about glass that generates our engagement? As my research based for those two questions I interview artists, gallery owners and directors, curators, collectors, and others[1] within and around the community of Australian studio glassmakers. I find currents of consensus, and that consensus directs this study. To place this consensus within a critical framework I also incorporate a range of writings including those of Roland Barthes, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Gilles Deleuze, Umberto Eco, Wolfgang Iser, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. My research leads me to Romanticism, which I use to argue a position for studio glass practice in the context of contemporary art practice.
To develop my argument I divide my thesis into two sections. In the first section of the thesis I analyse the power of narrative to engage the viewer and connote form within Australian studio glasswork. To unravel and examine narratives pertinent to studio glass I look at the significance of labels commonly used to place our work and practice into context. I then look at Australian studio glass in comparison to the contemporaneous emergence of conceptual art in Australia to discover any convergence in their narratives. Seeking an overarching context for studio glass within contemporary arts practice I then explore the relevance of Romanticism within the historic and contemporary narratives of Australian studio glass. I then use my painted portraits as practical evidence of the significance of gesture as I establish a dialogue between theoretical and material narratives of technical process, genre, identity and artistic sensibility. I end Section One of this thesis by exploring the relationship between the glasswork as object and the meaning taken from the multiple narratives that inform interpretation of a glasswork.
As studio glass practitioners we define our practice through medium by identifying ourselves strongly with glass. For this reason glass is central to the contextual positioning of our practice. In the second section of my thesis I examine the physical and psychological basis for our intellectual and aesthetic engagement with glass. I identify qualities of glass and its technical processes that extend our aesthetic experience beyond the tangible glass object both physically and psychologically through realising the potential of glass to expand, mutate and transcend object. I show that glass achieves this transcendence both through the glass object’s conceptual capacity to carry narratives at multiple levels and through the glass object’s physical ability to transmit light. I establish that these inherent qualities are utilised by contemporary art practitioners.
With reference to existing theories including those of Eco and Iser I examine openness in a glasswork, that is, a glass object’s availability for varied interpretation by its viewers. I discuss how this openness to interpretation provides the glasswork with poetic potential for multiple meaning, and how this openness remains over time, and within diverse contexts. In my analysis of openness I utilise the metaphor of the glass object as landscape. I make the following proposals: As with landscape, the receptiveness of a glass object to our imaginative projections provides us with the means to gain insight into our own psyche. We gain this insight as our perception of the glass object mutates in a continually evolving feedback loop between the work and ourselves. This occurs as a series of actions and reactions creating an event shaped and reshaped by our subjective response within the context of our situation in culture, time and place. This subjective response is the domain of affective engagement – romanticism.
I then approach glass with reference to the writings of Deleuze and present a methodology that utilises the forces inherent in the glassmaking process to achieve creative originality. Developing this methodology through the process of my glass casting, I posit an engagement with glass that is relevant to, and compatible with contemporary art practice. I support this positioning by referring to D. N. Rodowick's writings on the figural, arguing that it is through the figural that studio glass can affectively and deeply engage the maker and the viewer. This engagement occurs without direct representation, relying instead on the emotional projections with which the viewer structures form within the formlessness of the glass, thus opening the glass object as the projection of a viewer’s desire. This process is an exemplar of Romanticism and through this process the glass object becomes transcendent.
[1] Records of interviews are attached as transcriptions in a portable document format (PDF) in the Appendix. These transcriptions inform my enquiry and they substantially guide the content of my thesis.
Return to contents page