'You Get a Rhythm about it' - Peter Minson; 'Emerging Contemporaries'; '6.30 Sessions' - Nellie Peoples + Michelle Stemm. Craft ACT. On until 19 March.
Peter Minson uses lampworking to create a diverse range of glass objects, from goblets to elaborate candelabra. It is a demanding technique that involves manipulating hot glass over a flame. Minson learnt his lampworking skills in his family factory that produced scientific and medical glass. Later in life he devoted these skills to more artistic ventures.
His exhibition at Craft ACT is a display of his work from the early 1970s to the present day. I was surprised to see that the colourful harlequin-style teapots, a highlight of the exhibition, dated from the 1970s as they look so fresh and contemporary.
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There can be a playfulness about lampworking glass that comes from its sense of theatre. Minson uses his talent to spin glass into objects like masted galleons, carriages with horses, candelabra with putti and roses, and swans with red bills.
However his creative imagination takes flight in the series of flutes and goblets with their decorated stems (a tribute to traditional glassmaking skills in decoration) and birds like the Royal Spoonbill in clear glass with long elegant legs.
Emerging Contemporaries at Craft ACT is an exhibition that affords emerging artists the opportunity to exhibit their work in a public gallery. It provides a valuable experience for artists from a wide spectrum of institutions, particularly in these present times of disruption and uncertainty.
Some artists obviously enjoy pushing the limits of their chosen material and the sense of discovery along the way. Among the more confident and resolved artworks is Tuna Moire by Brandon Harrison. Technically a functional seat, this artfully skilled work is also a beautiful organic sculpture in Tasmanian oak with its slatted curves following its own internal rhythms.
Noel Davar's Cathedral Table in old-growth Australian cedar and rock maple has also a gentle flowing rhythm in fretwork and rail. As its name suggests, it takes its inspiration from the delicate tracery of cathedral windows.
Roz Hall's witty conceptual work Kinetics of Uncertainty is a series of ceramic installations where she plays with colour-coordinated ceramic rings and bowls paired with household objects like beaters and turntables. The objects are held in suspension as tension is created by the imminent potential of movement and change.
The third exhibition at Craft ACT is 6.30 Sessions. The title refers to the time during COVID-19 restrictions that Brisbane artists Nellie Peoples and Michelle Stemm "met" virtually at 6.30am.
Their normal art practice routines being curtailed by state border closures, they were both feeling creatively disheartened so they decided to meet to encourage each other to make art every day.
Drawn by necessity to the immediate environment of their respective Brisbane backyards (luckily lush tropical gardens), they made photographs, diaries and drawings of what they observed.
These drawings were translated into delightful small linear sculptures, brooches and pins of foliage and flowers using galvanised garden wire. These initial explorations of line eventually became, through a series of evolving processes, documented by the artists' more traditional jewellery pieces.
The creative journey revealed by the project documentation reveals an insightful overview into the creative minds of two artists forced by circumstances outside their control to find inspiration, motivation and a creative order in their surroundings.
As we look back on the past two years of disruption and change, I feel this is one exhibition that we will remember as succinctly summing up how two artists chose to cope with the world they knew growing smaller, but also finding solace around them in creative companionship and a fruitful creative project.
