Kate Weir ventures down to Fulham to explore the wonderful world of glass sculpture.
Glass sculpture is something of a niche market which bridges the tricky divide between fine art and home décor with much more aplomb than more esoteric kinds of sculpture. Unless you’re Charles Saatchi, buying an exquisite fine art goblet is a much more tasteful addition to your home than say The Chapman Brothers’ Fuck Face, and is less likely to cause a stir when you whip it out for a dinner party.
Fulham's ZeST Gallery specialises in glass fine art. The current exhibition – Deep Surface – features work by some of the most esteemed members of the Guild of Glass Engravers, and the gallery is a veritable copper-wheel-engraved cornucopia of nifty glasswork. The plain ol’ flute holding my champagne just doesn’t cut it after I’ve seen the multi-coloured, sandblasted and engraved beauties on display.
There’s Luana Adriani’s graphic pop-art plates, James Denison Pender’s reliefs from which figures emerge like ghosts, and Max Jacquard’s covetable frosted crocuses. I also love his wall relief Tryst #6, a fragile cast of a twig and a handkerchief made out of glass, that's so realistic that I have to (carefully) inch closer to check.
ZeST’s ace in the hole, Alison Kinnaird MBE, is also displaying some of her otherworldly pieces: intricately carved and shot through with coloured neon light, her work is achingly contemporary and keeps the exhibition feeling fresh and modern.
My personal favourites are probably Lucy Batt’s gorgeous vases [pictured], brightly coloured with estuaries of filigree colour running through them. But there’s such a vast assortment of shapes, colours, textures and effects that I think I may never be able to return to the world of plain transparent glass again.
The breadth of the techniques used and the eerie effect they can have when used on such delicate material are astounding, but there are a few cracks (sorry...) in this exhibition. The physical and technical limits of such a specific material inspire people working with the medium to be more creative, but it does mean that some of the pieces can look similar. Perhaps the most difficult obstacle to overcome with glass sculpture is that many of the pieces are simply beautiful objects, and I find them difficult to read, understand and empathise with in the same way as, say, a painting. But if you can get beyond this and simply appreciate the enigmatic quality of exquisite work, then ZeST offers some of the finest around.
Deep Surface is at ZeST Gallery until 5th May 2010.
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