Caterina
Tognon Gallery
Afar - Jessica
Loughlin
Caterina Tognon presents the first solo exhibition in Italy by the Australian artist Jessica
Loughlin, entitled Afar on until
January 6. Afar brings to Venice a body of works by the artist
born out of her fascination with light and space experienced in the Australian landscape. By using glass in
a Post-minimalistic way, Loughlin wants to convey a sense of both emptiness and
abstraction, triggering a mental stillness in the viewer. Her subtle and quiet
glass-works can be considered as abstract mindscapes, and express a beauty of
emptiness lived in the reduced landscapes of the interior, where light and
space are fused together.
“The
boundary between air, water, and ground blurred. Light became the landscape,
and I looked down into the sky. It was as if I was suspended in space.”
Jessica Loughlin
Loughlin’s
artworks are influenced by her experience of long travels in the desert areas
of South Australia, where one of the
largest salt lakes in the world resides, Kati
Thanda - Lake Eyre. This lake rarely is fulfilled with water. Flying over
it, different passages of shades become visible. These, starting from the salty
white, tend to fuse with the bright-light azure of the sky, giving birth to
huge views where the light turns into landscape and one becomes totally
immersed both on a physical and emotional level.
Caterina Tognon and Sandy Benjamin
The event was born from a
collaboration between Caterina Tognon
and Sandy Benjamin OAM, Melbourne,
and it is part of the program of The
Venice Glass Week.
Patricia and Barry Friedman
Landscapes of Light
‘My material is both
glass and light, I use the glass to sculpt light and shadow.’
Landscapes of light, a series of long and narrow wall
pieces. They are bi-dimensional pictures that recall the ephemeral event of the
water in the desert. Only thanks to a meticulous and slow gaze from the
audience, all the changes of the colors can be catched. The title itself of
this exhibition – Afar – da lontano, tempts to highlight the
importance of an extended observation. These are works that require a specific
time to be admired and to induce the audience with a contemplative state, which
is necessary in order to catch the transparencies, the light, and many
undertones of the pieces.
David Landau and Howard Lockwood
Francoise Guichon and Jasper
Claudia Borella, Simone
Vinall, David Gartelmann, Tom Moore and Rosie Hannam
Marie-Rose Kahane and Caterina
Tognon
Caterina
Tognon Gallery
Afar - Jessica
Loughlin
“Loughlin has invented a
unique technical process that both suggests and embodies the passage of water,
flooding and leaving its imprint on the earth’s surface, evaporating,
condensing again as
cloud. She grinds solid glass into fine powder, which she
moves across sheet glass with water, leaving imprints of the water’s movement
across the surface. The water is left to evaporate, creating further watermarks
in the glass. The glass is then fused in a kiln. This process is repeated to
build up layers of these water imprints, residues and textures. The glass, like
the desert, now holds the memory of water as it shape-shifts through phases of
the hydrological cycle.”
Saskia Baudel
Australian author and biologist
Saskia Baudel
Australian author and biologist
Marco Arosio and Carla Cerutti
Art Liu
Gwenda Cermel and Alessandra Pianon
Afar -
Jessica Loughlin
Receptor of Light|
Receptor of Light|
The works, either wall-pieces or tri-dimensional
sculptures are hand-made by the artist in her studio in Adelaide, with the use of flat kilns for the glass fusion.