When Nick Mount was an art student in the early 1970s, glass art was barely a concept in Australia.
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There were no glass artists, no studios or workshops, and no opportunities to learn the ancient craft.
Today, there are several world-renowned studios and workshops around the country, and Mount is a leading figure in the scene.
And, having recently been named a Living Treasure by Object: Australia Centre for Design, he has just opened his touring show, The Fabric of Work, at Canberra Glassworks.
He said the glass community had exploded since his early days as an artist, and the art form was recognised on its own terms in a way that would have been unthinkable 40 years ago.
He has been creating glass art full-time since 1974 with his wife, Pauline, and finds friends and resources for his practice wherever he travels in the country.
“It is very exciting,” he said. ''There’s been a real recognition grown for (glass art) and the technical skills have become outrageous.”
He said Australia’s relative isolation was an advantage for an art form that is simultaneously rooted in tradition but benefits from modern innovations.
“Australian people, because they’re far, far away from any of the centres of glass – Italy or Germany or England or Sweden or whatever – we’re not connected to a tradition, so we’re not bound by a tradition,” he said.
“It means we haven’t got technical support from a local industry, but that has also required us to be innovative – you pick up something from somewhere else and you make it your own in your own environment with your own skills base.”
His exhibition is a series of sculptural pieces that evoke the concept of work and hand skills, drawing on traditional Venetian techniques that he adapted for a modern context.
“The theme is the value of work – hand work, hand skills and identity that people get through their hands and through their skills,” he said.
“I use tools as a motif – the plumb bob I use quite a bit – and then I take the glass-blowing skills that I’ve got, which are the technical skills set down in the traditions of glass-blowing through history since 100 years AD when people first started blowing glass with a blow-pipe and tipping it out of the furnace. Those are exactly the same pre-industrial revolution skills that we use with our hands, so you take those and push them a little bit ... It’s like winemaking.”
Nick Mount will be speaking about his work at the Canberra Glassworks on Saturday at 10.30am.
Nick Mount - The Fabric of Work is showing at the Canberra Glassworks until June 19.
