- Venue
- National Glass Centre
- Location
- North East England
As exhibition titles go, this is a pretty good one. Intriguing certainly, but given that this was taking place at the self-professed national centre for glass, it seemed something of a risqué curatorial decision – is Grainne Sweeney deluded with glass as a material? Not quite – the term describes a form of depression documented during the 15th – 17th centuries, when sufferers believed themselves to be made of glass. With these historical references in mind, Sweeney and co-curator Alessandra Pace have juxtaposed contemporary art works with scientific objects on loan from various museums, to examine mental and physical frailties which could be deemed glass-like.
In one of four glass vitrines is placed Katharine Dowson’s Memory of a Malformation, a three-dimensional etching into a glass block of the cousin of the artists’ Venous Arterial Malformation – a brain tumour. The etching appears ephemeral, yet by freezing it in solid glass the memory has been made permanent. Carla Guagliardi’s has filled a sphere of glass with water, and hung it aloft via strings of cotton, copper and steel through its three ‘mouths’. Over time, the water will cause the cotton to become slack and the copper to oxidize; only the steel will retain a constant tension to prevent the glass from smashing. Annie Cattrell’s delicate glass lungs display our breathing apparatus in exquisitely delicate detail. In doing so, she has made real what those suffering from the glass delusion feared – that parts of their bodies were indeed made of glass.
The strength of this exhibition is the inclusion of many works which are related to this idea of the glass delusion via concept and process, rather than material means. Hanging from an embroidery hoop attached to a ceiling joist is Celia Baker’s Wool Work. Unfortunately, the gallery text insufficiently describes these long trailing lengths sewn from woollen squares as just being the result of compulsive activity. Apparently Baker, a lady in her eighties, produced these pieces as a way in which to exercise her arthritic hand joints, maintain dexterity and help relieve her anxiety. They are the product of her physical and mental glass-like conditions, more related to the Glass Delusion than at first appears. As I was leaving the gallery, I saw an unstable reflection of myself in Vedouvamazzei’s vibrating Short Sighted Mirror. The Glass Delusion may be confined to history, but we all have the potential to be breakable, brittle – in short, glass-like.
