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Liam Reeves, Warp/Fade 006
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LONDON GLASSBLOWING
VETRO: Exploring the Venetian Influence
12/9/2014-18/10/2014
Opening to coincide with the start of the London Design Festival, London Glassblowing will be presenting one of their most enlightening and fascinating exhibitions to date.
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Posted 11 September 2014
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Fifteen artists, including some of the finest glassmakers in the UK today, have been challenged to produce outstanding new works that explore contemporary interpretations of traditional Italian techniques. Some techniques date back to the golden age of 15th Century Venetian glassblowing, others to Roman times.
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VETRO not only celebrates the outstanding vision, skill and precision of the traditional Italian glassmakers but also explores how their exquisite techniques have been reinvented for new generations in the hands of our most innovative contemporary glassmakers.
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Scott Benefield is one of the world’s leading exponents of Venetian glassmaking methods, In Lattimo: Compositions he explores traditional cane techniques developed in Renaissance Venice five centuries ago. Rods of lattimo glass are arranged to form intricate patterns, employing the traditional murrine technique.
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Edmond Byrne, Cylinder Landscape Group
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Like Benefield, Liam Reeves explores pivotal techniques from glassblowing’s two millennia of rich history, skilfully blending ancient Roman and Renaissance Venetian techniques, such as filigrana a reticello, with the finesse of factory glass and the precision of digital media. His unique glass forms take inspiration from the past, yet are wholly contemporary.
Layne Rowe has produced a stunning collection, inventing entirely new ways of approaching cane work, over-layering different coloured canes around a form that is twisted, and, when cold, cut into to reveal vibrant colours beneath the surface. The viewer is invited to look once, then to want to look again, to get as close as possible to the pieces to understand the hidden secrets of their complex detail. ??Intrigued by objects that have a resonance from the past, Edmond Byrne uses mould blown glass, an ancient technique dating from classical times. In place of the traditional wood or cast iron moulds, Byrne uses textile moulds, which are dipped in slip-clay to create the textured surface. After blowing the mould, Byrne then adds patina and cracks to the surface to recreate the weathering of ancient Roman glass.
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Owen Johnson, Paisley Translation No 3 (Detail)
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Once design director at Salviati in Murano, Simon Moore’s work for VETRO will demonstrate Venetian cold work techniques, such as Battuto and Sabbiato, ‘so often the unsung hero of so much work’, says Moore. Three pieces from his ‘Façon de Venise’ series will also be exhibited.
RCA PhD Student Owen Johnson appropriates existing decorative patterns and motifs, taking them through a process of material translation by employing stunning craft methods like the Murrini technique.
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Louis Thompson & Hanne Enemark collaboration, Panicum (detail), 2014
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Once design director at Salviati in Murano, Simon Moore’s work for VETRO will demonstrate Venetian cold work techniques, such as Battuto and Sabbiato, ‘so often the unsung hero of so much work’, says Moore. Three pieces from his ‘Façon de Venise’ series will also be exhibited.
RCA PhD Student Owen Johnson appropriates existing decorative patterns and motifs, taking them through a process of material translation by employing stunning craft methods like the Murrini technique.
Carrying on the RCA theme, previous graduates Louis Thompson and Hanne Enemark have collaborated on a stunning body of work, utilising both opaque and clear glass, and pushing the boundaries of glass cane inclusions within blown forms.
A visit to VETRO at London Glassblowing this Autumn promises a rare glimpse into the past history of the remarkable art of studio glass through the work of some of the finest, state of the art glass artists of our times.
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