The craft revival in Australia in the 1970s was very much influenced by exchange between artists from different countries – most particularly the United States of America. This was especially true of the studio glass movement, an area in which Australia had no pre-existing tradition. Richard Marquis (b. 1945), an American glass artist, was to change all that. As one of a number of visiting glass artists, Marquis arrived in 1974 and travelled around Australia giving workshops – demonstrations that were to kick-start the studio glass movement in this country. more...
The Tasmanian School of Art received an artist-in-residence grant from the Australia Council and, in 1977, brought Marquis to Hobart for a year to develop a glass studio with Les Blakebrough at Mount Nelson – at what was then the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education. Blakebrough and Marquis spent the following six months producing exhibition pieces and establishing a strong practice of glass art in Tasmania.
Dick Marquis arrived down under in 1974 with a pioneering spirit, enormous interest in what he could see and find, and a huge capacity to be generous with his skills and information. What he took home is just a drop in the ocean of his extensive collections, while what he left behind after that and subsequent visits helped lay the foundation for the development of the Australian glass movement of today.
Nick Mount – The Glass Art Society 2005 Journal
The irregular size, shape and decoration of the glasses and decanter in this set are characteristic of the early studio glass movement’s emphasis on the gestural traces left in the object by the artist’s manipulation of the hot glass. In an era of counter culture and alternative lifestyles, such gestures also embodied a sense of individual freedom that was important to the crafts movement as a whole.
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