Exhibitions

Sabbia Gallery presents Solid Light, the long awaited stunning solo exhibition by one of Australia’s most dedicated and talented glass artists.

Richard Whiteley is one of Australia’s most successful and innovative contemporary artists working in glass. He has been involved in many important group shows, and 10 solo exhibitions, in Australia and overseas since his time studying under the great Klaus Moje at the world renowned Canberra School of Art Glass Workshop in 1984.

Richard is one of our most respected artists and educators in the medium of glass, having taught in Illinois, USA, Sydney, currently holding the position of Head of the Glass Workshop at the Australian National University School of Art in Canberra since 2002.

Richard’s work has been collected in some of the most prominent public and private collections around the world, and continues to be an artist whom is greatly admired by both collectors and his contemporaries.

For the past ten years Richard’s work has been an exploration of space and form using glass as a substrate activated by light. The fundamental material qualities of glass – transparency, translucency, and reflection – are agents within the work that create the dialogue between voids and solids.

He sees very close parallels between bodies and buildings and through the interplay of positive and negative space, alluding to personal and psychological space. The language of architectural form and industrial shapes strongly influences Richard’s practice as he is most interested in the tension and ambiguity between what is man-made and what is organic.