The Lathe Riders brought cold work into the limelight at this year’s Glass Art Society conference in Berlin. For the first time in history, cold work got centre stage as the opening demo at a GAS conference.
“At the Tip of the Wheel”
Glass Exhibition at The Glass Factory, Boda Glasbruk, Sweden.
23 June – 20 October 2024
I’m fascinated by the impact of mass media on our daily lives. In my recent series of sculptures called ‘This is not a TV’, I explore how analog and digital technologies shape our experiences, especially in an age where constant digital surveillance is prevalent.
Scrolling through the abyss of my digital addiction frustrates me. I need to un-frame my mind. This unrelenting pressure to ‘create content’ is driving me up the wall. Maybe I’ve found a way to do it.
It’s not often when one gets a phone call out of the blue where the conversation kicks off around light, optics and sculpture. I answered this call at the beginning of December, to imagine a sculpture which encapsulates lights, camera and action for the Silwerskermfees 2022.
In his book, Prehistoric European Art (1968), Walter Tobrügge discusses this specific Palaeolithic sculpture, suggesting: “If the work was, indeed, intended so to combine two motifs in a single object, like a puzzle picture, then it supplies evidence that the purpose of most early art was magical.”
Continuing my exploration of digital vs. analogue experienced lives, I have constructed small sculptures as an experiment in phenomenology called Telescreens. These sculptures explore tangible experiences within the digital dystopia of our global lockdown and isolation.
It is truly a proud moment to be recognised on this grand international platform for contemporary glass, to be one of the voices intertwining the world of glass and future, twenty-first century art.