Jessica Loughlin is known for her quiet understated approach to kiln formed glass. Her artworks prompt a meditative reverie influenced by her fascination with the beauty of emptiness. Loughlin has been practicing over 25 years and exhibits internationally. Her work has been awarded the Fuse Glass Prize 2018, Tom Malone Art Prize in both 2004 and 2007 and the Ranamok prize in Australia. Her works are part of major public collections including National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, Corning Museum of Glass NY USA, Mobile Museum of Art AL, USA, MUDAC Lausanne, Switzerland and Victorian and Albert Museum, London UK. In 2020 she was the second Australian to have her work selected for the Loewe Craft Prize. Currently her survey exhibition, ‘of light’ is on national tour as part of the JamFactory Icon series, which is accompanied by a monograph of her work ‘from here’ published by Wakefield Press.
“In this terrain, without scale… the near and far fold into each other” 1
When immersed within a landscape, almost too large to grasp and so minimal that light becomes landscape, we often turn inward, due to the need to orientate ourself within space and time.
I’m interested in these landscapes, such as the large salt lakes of South Australia, where the boundaries between the near and far resonate and the boundaries between us and what we look upon dissolve.
For this exhibition I will be showing the series ‘resonance’. These pieces are made with water and glass powder. They are almost like water weavings, like a veil in which light and space resonate from behind. They represent the fabric of what ties us to our environment, an ever-changing relationship that deepens overtime until we realise both are one.
1 Rebecca Solnit
