Feature Article
GLASS ACT - an eclectric exhibition of exquisite glass art at Kingfisher Gallery in West Perth features glass artists from around the nation.
Carl Jung said, "art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument." No truer is this than when applied to glass art, a medium often requiring a feat of endurance through searing, dangerous heat, and according to Nick Mount, one of Australia's best known glass artists exhibiting at Kingfisher Gallery in West Perth, it's a medium he thinks he will never know well enough to be fully familiar with the material. The drive and constant practice over many years to master the skills required in blowing glass art is rewarded in luminescent forms reflecting and refracting light in jewel-like colours.
Nick Mount with a selection of his scent bottles.
Kingfisher Gallery in West Perth has assembled an eclectic mix of artists from around Australia for its exhibition Glass Art, on show until 8 February. Directors Stuart and Jan Miller said "we are both excited and proud to present this exhibition of exceptional glass art from both Western Australian and Eastern states artists." Local artists include Alisdair and Risch Gordon, Jamie Worsley, Mark Leib and Jill Yelland. Eastern states artists include Nick Mount (SA), Noel Hart (NSW), James McMurtrie (Vic) and Tim Shaw (SA).
Roughly one third of the exhibition features the work of South Australian-based glass artist Nick Mount whose career in glass art dates back to the 1970s, significantly in Victoria's Gippsland region, an area recognised as the Australian birthplace of studio glass. Born in Adelaide, he lasted one year at the South Australian School of Art before becoming disenchanted with its outmoded methods of teaching. He followed lecturer Robin Wallace Crabb and young artist Nigel Lendon to rural Gippsland in Victoria, who helped set up a new, innovative art school at the Gippsland College of Advanced Education. A visit by American glass artist Richard Marquis in 1974, who was to advise on glass art courses in colleges, changed Nick's previous indecision about his future path in the visual arts.
Marquis said, "I demonstrated, I blew something. Nick had a go at it and he did exactly what I had done. He gathered it perfectly, he did everything like he was a natural. It made sense to him." Marquis later used Nick as an assistant in touring and demonstrations throughout Victoria and Tasmania. A grant in 1975 allowed Nick and his wife to visit Marquis in California, where a vibrant studio glass scene convinced him he could earn a living in glass art and also be creatively satisfied. In Europe they visited the famous Venetian glass factories on the island of Murano, where Marquis had also worked, and toured the factory. The combination of the creativity he saw in California and the discipline of the factories in Venice gave him a model to pursue. He was the first Australian glass artist to absorb these influences which were to have a long-ranging effect on his career.
Back in Australia in 1975 he and his wife opened one of the first private glass studios in a cowshed at Yinnar South in Gippsland, later moving a few kilometres away to equally isolated Budgeree to a home and studio. Budgeree Glass was in operation until 1991, with Nick finding from the outset he could easily sell everything he produced.
In the book Nick Mount: Incandescence by Margot Osborne, which covers his series of extravagant glass scent bottles since 1997, the author writes "they gain further layers of meaning when viewed in the context of his earlier exhibition work, and, to a certain extent, his production work." The book shows his earlier explorations using innovative themes such as fishing floats, and includes a series of glass walking canes originally called 'friggers' by glass factory workers in England who traditionally created the canes in their spare time as an example of their prowess with the medium.
'Bunker Bay,' fused and slumped glass plate, kiln carved and finished with metallic dichroic by Jill Yelland.
Nick's long experience and generosity in sharing his wealth of knowledge has seen him in demand as a teacher/mentor in glass schools in Japan, Europe and Canada, and he exhibits both locally and internationally. Decades of working with glass has not dimmed his enthusiasm or respect for the medium, and the ever present challenge of further exploration. Of his latest series of scent bottles he said, "I feel like I'm just scratching the surface."
Participating Western Australian artist Jill Yelland has also been entranced by the medium of glass, after working with printmaking and screen prints for fifteen years until she 'discovered' glass in 2003. Jill studied graphic design in Australia and at the prestigious School of Design in Basel, Switzerland before embarking on a career of design, advertising and publishing in Frankfurt, Paris, Zurich and Melbourne. She returned to Perth to lecture in design, typography and printmaking. Her work is in collections such as The Royal Mint, Perth; Woodside Ltd; BHP Billiton, and the Water Corporation of WA.
Jill said, "I was looking for a change of medium which enabled me to work with colour and texture to create depth and the layering effect I had achieved with my
prints. I chose the imported US Bullseye glass, because of its great range of colours transparent and opaques and combined that with the kiln-carving technique, which enabled me to create my work in my style, but in a different medium."
"This is what my Swiss training was all about, so it was a natural thing for me to do. My glass is just an extension of my print designs, with a degree of the unexpected thrown in! That is what makes it exciting and I love it."
Kingfisher Gallery is located at 49 Colin Street, West Perth. Visit www.kingfishergallery.com.au for more information.
Reference: 'Nick Mount: Incandesence' by Margot Osborne, Wakefield Press.