Gabrielle Adamik
(left) Breathing Pattern, 2023, 152 x 200 x 200 cm, Hot and kiln formed glass, rope, steel, paper mache, plaster, pva, paint.
(right) You Might Be Holding, 2023, 288 x 34 x 21 cm, Hot and kiln formed glass, steel.
Image by Silversalt Photography
GABRIELLE ADAMIK | THE SOFTENING
JOIN US ON SATURDAY 4 OCTOBER, 3 - 5 PM, FOR THE OPENING OF THE SOFTENING BY GABRIELLE ADAMIK
Gabrielle Adamik stays close to her material. In The Softening, her new glass sculptures offer gravitational droops and cushioned blows. The glass meets with contrasting surfaces – glossy powder coating that softens sharp edges and cement veneer that burnishes away any tight corners. Puddles flood over and catch between shelves that suggest a molten smile or a luxurious drape. Bubbling glass floor pieces suggest mercurial stepping stones, either pathway or portal. The artist describes these as “like drops of water on nasturtiums.” The work luxuriates in the body, with pooling forms and suggestions of blood at the cellular level.
Adamik reflects on her earlier studies in movement, “With the dance training, I think I’m just realising this, but I always start with the body. It is my way in.” She notes the shared language between landscape and the body, both with their shifting terrains, their valleys, crevices and mounds, flows and veins (of gold or blood).
It is the vitality of glass that continues to fascinate the artist. She explains her process:
“Glass and the way I’m approaching it, it’s got this long working time between molten and solid. With metals, you heat metal and immediately it is liquid. Nothing in between. Glass, you have this real moment where you can freeze the movement. It all comes back to movement. A lot of the work is made hot and pushing the glass to capture that moment just before it gives up, in a way, and drops or lets go.”
Much of the new work suggests interrupted flow states, while worm-like objects feel more talismanic and could be comfortably grasped in the hand. These pieces are suspended on a curiously complex plinth constructed by Adamik to demonstrate their downward pull. One technique involves pulling lolly-coloured glass rods in swirls, then breaking it up and throwing it back into the kiln to form puddles, “almost like paintings”. The glass shards float within transparencies that are coaxed into states of becoming – until the artist crash cools it, forcing a dramatic temperature change in the kiln and sudden stasis. The end of the dance.
In her studio, Gabrielle Adamik connects with American sculptor Richard Serra’s scrawled Verb List from 1967, described by Serra as “actions to relate to oneself, material, place and process.” The Verb List is a reminder for Adamik to stay close to material forces rather than reach for metaphor and narrative. Actions we might apply to works in The Softening include:
to stretch, to smear, to modulate,
to grasp, to spill, to bond
of time, of equilibrium, of gravity …
Gabrielle Adamik also suggests a type of self-portraiture is at play in her work as her sculptures explore the qualities of a softening body. But the physicality of working with the hands remains key. As she states, “the material has a pretty loud voice in this work.”
3/11/2023 - 18/11/2023
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