Exhibitions

Sabbia Gallery is pleased to present this solo exhibition from glass artists Richard Whiteley.

My studio-based practice focuses on abstracted forms that employ voids as the primary compositional element. I am interested in how these voids within the fabric of glass can be read as both positive and negative.

The physical process of the works entail that the forms are built from the inside out; from sketches and models voids are ordered first and external structures are built to encapsulate these forms. The material qualities of glass – transparency and translucency, and the way that light is reflected and refracted – are the agents within the work that create the dialogue between voids and solids, activated by light.  Light is the key element within the work – it has a dynamic relationship with the layering of forms and is hard to predict because the qualities of light fill my works with different moods and properties.

Early in my career I looked to geometry and the language of architecture as references for my work, but over the last few years the idea of the body has been an increasingly important point of departure. The hard geometry of the internal voids within my work is softening, gradually giving way to asymmetry and further abstraction, as these new works become more organic and corporal.

Richard Whiteley, 2016