White-hot Australian glass state of art

      Works of internationally-renowned Australian glass artists are being displayed in the exhibition White Hot: Contemporary Australian glass in Ha Noi.
The exhibition highlights the practices of eight contemporary glass artists who, by challenging current glass techniques, are at the forefront of glass practice in Australia.
The works of Jessica Loughlin, Janice Vitkovsky and Brenden Scott French are presented vertically on the wall in a pictorial context.
French has successfully reconsidered painting, as object and surface, by incorporating pristine glass smeared and dribbled with paint, cracked, broken and reassembled, says Barbara Mc-Conchie, executive director of Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre in Canberra.
His Engine – The Crossing (valour in the face of corruption) is an "object that is solid, opaque and abstracted to the wall, the graphic depiction belying its three-dimensional materiality."
Loughlin’s subtle and monochromatic work describes elements of light, air and water, bringing into being a sense of atmosphere.
Vitkovsky is driven by a need to hold still the movement of change, to suspend time so that change seems to be taking place eternally within the material itself.
The works of Deirdre Feeney, Itzell Tazzyman and Wendy Fairclough push glass into the realm of installation and new media practices.
Feeney’s practice interlinks glass and projected moving images to explore the overlapping of architecture and memory. "Buildings, like people, can unknowingly store memories," she says. "I work interchangeable with the translucent material of glass and video animation to investigate the ends of memory, time and empty space, using architectural glass structures to play with the interaction of inner and outer."
Using household objects, Fairclough engages her viewers in the very notion of familiarity. Still Life #6 is an arrangement of vessels and funnels. Using dry parched colour, it is a symbolic and poetic metaphor for Australia’s harsh drought conditions, says a curator.
Accomplished glass blowers Tom Moore and Nadege Desgenetez have pushed functionality aside as they explore their personal narratives.
Moore’s glass blowing expertise enable him to "create a plethora of hybrid personalities," says the curator.
His works "never suffer from a sense of the predictable. His anthropomorphisms have closer links to the illuminating world of illustrated children’s stories, where nothing is impossible."
"My aim is to defy gravity and to melt the coldest heart," says Moore.
Tazzyman is interested in "the points of intersection, where human stories, consciousness, morality, perceptions and spirit, junction with glass."
Her practice consists of crafted objects, sculptures and installations "that are singular, they use the glass for its poetic expression."
Desgenetez is interested in the interactions between memory and experience. "Narrative vignettes illustrating personal childhood recollections have allowed me to explore ideas of memory, place and gender," she says.
Speaking at the opening ceremony on Friday, Tran Khanh Chuong, chairman of the Viet Nam Fine Arts Association, said, "The exhibits are so near, but so different and so difficult to work with. Glass is around us. Australian artists show us that with artistic endeavour we can turn common material into art works."
Distinguished among the guests at the event was Australian Ambassador Allaster Cox.
The exhibition runs until Sunday at the Viet Nam Fine Arts Museum at 66 Nguyen Thai Hoc Street.