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Presenting this incredible new body of work by glass artist Jenni Kemarre Martiniello.
These works channel environmental and spiritual elements from my Aboriginal, Chinese and Anglo-Celtic heritages and life experience. Their form references ancient Han Dynasty cocoon-shaped ceramic Hu, the form being the indicator of precious contents because silk cocoons were the source of ancient China’s wealth. Just as silk strands are fragile yet resilient and can be woven into myriad patterns and fabrics, so DNA strands are genetically complex and resilient, holding the patterns of generations, weaving and preserving place, genealogy, identity. As a child of mixed cultural heritages growing up in Adelaide in the 1950s, the most powerful influences that shaped my experiences were story, poetry, art and music. On my Anglo-Celtic side, my mother was a classical pianist, a mezzo-soprano and a teacher. On the Chinese and Aboriginal side, my father was a quiet resistance hero whose transmission of heritage came through story and history, also accompanied by music. I remember jiving around the kitchen at a very young age to jazz issuing forth from the ever-present radio, and being transfixed by rhythm and blues, Gershwin and Rachmaninov. For me musical notes have always had shape and colour, constituting a lexicon that communicates far beyond the ear. The sound and tonal character of each individual instrument participates in that lexicon. They constitute another dimensional language that transcends inscriptions on sheet music, and has a deeply spiritual being. The murrine created for this work is an attempt to give visual expression to elements of that language. Accordingly, these hot blown glass Hu, or heritage cocoon jars, also hold something precious, the multilayered fusion of colours, stories, sounds and patterns of culturally and genetically transmitted perception.
Jenni Kemarre Martiniello OAM
