Review: Blanche Tilden and Tom Moore's glass works have deep connections

Ripple Effect: a 25 year survey of the work of Blanche Tilden is a Geelong Art Gallery travelling exhibition. Tom Moore's exhibition Abundant Wonder originates from the Adelaide JamFactory. Deep connections can be discerned between what initially appears to be very dissimilar artists. Both Tilden and Moore use glass as their main material and both are highly conscious of its technical and aesthetic possibilities as well as its magical properties as it changes from molten fluidity to a solid material. Both are thoughtful about their work practices and are drawn to considering new technology - Tilden in how she is able to make her jewellery combining glass, metal and found objects using sophisticated methods of production, and Moore in how he places his fantastical hybrid glass creatures against a human built environment, questioning their survival in an increasingly alien technological world.

Tilden is known for her signature works based on the structure and movement of bicycle chains. These interlinking chains of glass and metal demonstrate the artist's interest in circularity, repetition and gradation of geometric forms. The long linked five-metre chain that introduces the exhibition was made to commemorate Geelong as the UNESCO 2017 Industrial City of Design. It is a later version of a 1997 work now in a Spanish museum. As Tilden notes, she has always been interested in the way jewellery encircles the body. In the exhibition the display of photographic portraits of people wearing their own Blanche Tilden jewellery is an interesting aside, demonstrating how her works enhance the body in a surprisingly sensuous way while remaining classic and elegant in their restraint.

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Among the many works, there are necklaces of sparkling segmented glass and necklaces made from old camera lenses polished so they look like moonstones, as well as delicate pendants of clustered glass drops. The exhibition provides not only an opportunity to see many different examples of Tilden's work from the last 25 years but also provides, through film and text, an insight into the artist's thinking and the working processes behind these works. It is an illuminating experience.

Moore makes the magic of glass a reality in his fantastical glass sculptures. His hybrid creatures sit rather precariously amid piled boxes or inhabit complex dioramas of cityscapes or jungles of fierce green tropical plants. They are also animated in short videos.

I am drawn to one narrative of two green glass fish - one is depicted head down with tail in the air, another is upside down in a dark glass pool. Near them is a small truncated female figure with only half of her shown as if she has her head metaphorically in the sand, her small stockinged legs with her black boots waving in the air. There is a temptation to read into this comic figure our own attitudes to current world problems.

Moore is aware of present concerns and the role that technology continues to play in creating man-made environments. His glass sculptures cleverly walk a line between a created world of fantasy and fun and a more serious, thought-provoking scenario where the laws of nature are upset so that birds have fins, potatoes have human eyes and fish are provided with wheels.

Moore is drawn to the alchemy of glass and his wonder at its possibilities are evident. His fertile imagination combined with his technical skills enable him to create this land of wonder and delight that we can enjoy while also being uneasily aware of the unsettling ideas that underpin its creation.

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