Marcel Hoogstad Hay is a Tarntanya (Adelaide) based artist working primarily with blown glass. He utilises the material and optical qualities of glass to explore ideas around perception, particularly of the physical world and astronomical phenomena.
Hoogstad Hay received a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours in 2012 from the Glass Workshop at the ANU School of Art and Design, Canberra and in 2014 completed the two-year Associate Training Program at JamFactory, Adelaide.
Hoogstad Hay was awarded the Australian Government Endeavour Fellowship in 2015 to undertake a residency at Berlin Glas e.V. (Germany), and holds works in the collection of the Ernsting Foundation Glass Museum, Germany. He has been a scholarship student at Penland School of Crafts (USA) and a Rosenberg Resident at Salem State University (USA). Hoogstad Hay has been a finalist in both the FUSE Glass Prize and the AGWA Tom Malone Prize, and was the 2023 recipient of the FUSE Glass Artist Residency at JamFactory.
I am interested in the ways people perceive the world; our perceptions of space, time and matter, and how these preconceived notions relate to the way things appear when viewed at different scales. Working with traditional Venetian techniques I create complex, gestural patterns. These lines of cane allude to paths traversed and how physical forces disrupt and distort these paths.
My work references the nature of things when viewed at a quantum scale, but also topography and how we might picture ourselves moving across the Earth’s surface. It is in the nature of these often-unseen scales, the unfathomability of the astronomical and the complexity of the quantum, that I find a sense of awe. Through my work I am exploring perceptual elements, breaking down our established understanding of the physical world. The reflective surfaces of my forms invite the viewer to engage with the work, and to contemplate the self and our place in the universe.
Marcel Hoogstad Hay, 2024
