Opening: Thursday 8 September, 6-8pm
Artist Talks: Saturday 8 October, 2pm
Stunning meditation on how steam affects glass in a new video work
Il Cimento by Pam Stadus is a new video-based work exploring the effects of steam, fog, condensation and thermal shock on glass. A group of glass vessels sit behind a transparent pane; they slowly recede from view as gaseous vapors of condensation fill the foreground. Eventually the glass pane begins to crack, evoking the aerial views of shattered Antarctic ice shelves affected by global warming.
Il Cimento takes its cue from the writings of renaissance scientists belonging to the Academie Del Cimento (1657-1667). Scientists at the Academie undertook extensive collaborations with Venetian glass blowers to design apparatuses appropriate for experimenting with heat and cold. A marked departure from Stadus's previous work in cast glass, Il Cimento is a slow meditation on the propensity of glass to subtly register changes in environmental conditions.
Pam Stadus studied art and design at Melbourne University before pursuing an interest in glass at Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle and completing a fellowship at the Creative Glass Centre of America, New Jersey. She has worked as an artist and designer; an art teacher and glass lecturer and her work has been being widely exhibited in Australia and America. Stadus is currently undertaking a PhD at Monash University. Her practice utilises video to express historical and contemporary connections between glass, science and the environment, whilst her cast glass work explores the propensity of glass to capture frozen moments.
Photography by Lily Feng
