Marking the 25th anniversary of North Lands Creative “ ASSEMBLY” will  re-engage with the North Lands Creative alumni and masters around the globe for Venice Glass Week in 2021. This collaborative exhibition will showcase a series of the participating artists and studios, each donating small artworks based on the interpretation of the ‘paperweight.

Underwater Fernweh : Sydney Harbour to Laguna di Venezia

Underwater Fernweh embodies currents of our consuming desire to be somewhere far away, somewhere unfamiliar. Found blown glasses are assembled and enriched undersea motifs, beads, and gold leaf. This paper weight work uses minimal material and energy to imagine the marine ecologies of the Laguna di Venezia and Sydney Harbour. Assembled found blown glass goblets conjures north-south underwater worlds, paint, CAD Vinyal and found beads, pearls and other treasures are enclosed and form the finial of this ‘paper weight’ work.

Artwork dimensions. 310mm x90mm Diameter

You can read more about this approach to thinking about places or things in the work of Celeste Olalquiaga her book : The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience: With Remarkable Objects of Art and Nature, Extraordinary Events, Eccentric Biography and Original Theory

A summary of the Artificial Kingdom Book ,
New York : Pantheon Books, 1998

‘Proposing instead that kitsch is the product of a larger sensibility of loss, Celeste Olalquiaga shows how it enables the momentary re-creation of experiences that exist only as memories or fantasies. Simultaneously exposing and celebrating this process, Olalquiaga gives us a bold, trenchant analysis of what and how we see when we look at kitsch.’

‘Tracing its beginnings to the nineteenth century-when industrialization transformed nature into an artificial kingdom of miniature scale.’

‘Olalquiaga describes the at once exhilarated and melancholic atmosphere where kitsch came to life. In an arresting mix of theory and anecdote, she examines objects from both the past and the present, probing the fluid boundaries between reality and fantasy, and finding in kitsch a phenomenon as relevant to our own time as it was to the era that made it a massive experience.’

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Here are some images from the research and development phase of the making of Fernweh. It is inspired by the colours of the lagoon and the glass and gold mosaics of the sea creatures depicted on the ceiling of the Basilica San Marco in Venice. In concert with this work is a sound work, that uses a selection of classical ‘water works’ and field recordings of the Balmain foreshore in Sydney, on Birrabirragul lands. Images of Sydney Harbour during winter - with Venetian style fog are also below.