P R E S S R E L E A S E
GLASS 2015
Festival Exhibition at Gallery TEN
NEW Exhibition – 01.08.15 – 31.08.15
Private View – 1st August 2015 – 2.00 – 4.30pm
Gallery TEN – Stafford Street - West End – Edinburgh
30 Glassmakers form the UK and beyond
Something has happened to glass. In the manner of an aunt turned fire-eater, uncle turned
riverboat gambler, it has become dangerously attractive. Well-mannered and discreet has become unruly and
pugnacious and seductively brazen.
It can even move, too, like Keiko Mukaide’s fragile leaves sprouting from sinister amber shoots of scorched
literature. Are we referencing Hiroshima? A puzzle throbs troublingly in the air, like an unmarked aircraft. Will
destruction overwhelm civility, or can we rely on goodness shouldering through? Ms Mukaide will make you leave
Gallery Ten in two minds. Unless you have spent more than ten seconds studying Alan Horsley’s extraordinary
dismembered torsos, reminiscent of Goya’s Spanish war sketches. This is despair stripped naked and scoured
with salt. A table piece for a banker, perhaps?
Cooler alarm is trafficked by Alex Pearce; the combination of crude wrought iron - shrapnel? spear-head?
embedded in the sleek outline of clear blown glass is pregnant with metaphors; the spectator steps back
involuntarily. Katya Filmus’ cast panels unsettle in the same way: are these tablets from some necromancer’s
cookbook? The reversed copperplate, off-kilter irruptions and scarlet toenails suggest someone is up to no good.
Time to take a step back and enjoy Karen Akester’s cast cartoon figures, a cheeky delight and a reminder of the
vast array of techniques that glass practitioners have at their disposal these days. Yoshiko Okada’s faces are
more elegantly philosophical and certainly more somnolent, but their sub-aquatic dreaminess is soothing; we are
not too distressed if, as Ms Okada seems to suggest, they have just fallen overboard from a banker’s yacht. If he
or she is lucky, they might catch a glimpse on the way down of one of Graham Muir’s shimmering, sultry,
vessels, half-giant shrimp, half distressed Chinese junk.
Laura Birdsall’s blown vases offer a more formal void, but the serrated rim and ribbed flanks demand to be
stroked; these are among the most sensual objects in the show, along with Layne Rowe’s dizzying knitted
vortexes which suck you in rather than ask you to consult your soul. Cathryn Shilling, another from the London
Glassblowing team, takes glass knitting a stage further with her breath-taking kiln technique. Can a glass skirt be
far behind?
If that thought makes you uncomfortable, brace yourself for Chantal Delporte’s haunting ectoplasmic structures.
They may remind you of something too long in your fridge; they also flaunt, in their eerie animalism, the inner
anarchy that can drive sober aunts and uncles off the rails.
Above Clockwise from top left – Karen Akester, Charlotte Hodes, Yoshiko Okada,
Heike Brachlow, Laura McKinley & Liam Reeves
For further information concerning any of the artists in the show please contact the
gallery.
Karen Akester Laura Birdsall Heike Brachlow Edmond Byrne
Robin Crawford Chantal Delporte Katya Filmus StephenFoster
Charlotte Hodes Alan Horsley Ingrid Hunter Peter Layton
Lindean Mill Bruce Marks Harry Morgan Graham Muir Keiko
Mukaide Paul Musgrove Laura McKinley Katsuya Ohigita
Yoshiko Okada Alex Pearce Pia Raeymaeker Liam Reeves
Layne Rowe Cathryn Shilling Lene Tangen Phil Vickery
Gallery TEN – 10 Stafford Street – West End – Edinburgh – EH3 7AU
Opening Times –
Tues – Sat – 10.30 – 5.30 (Mon – Sat during Festival)
www.galleryten.co.uk infogalleryten@gmail.com
Twitter: @TENedinburgh http://www.facebook.com/gallerytenedinburgh