Fire, with its dichotomous potential for creation
and destruction (and ultimately regeneration) has provided the
explosive theme for glass artist Nick Mount's latest series
of scent bottles. Integral to the glass-making process, fire
has a more ominous resonance within the Australian context,
for throughout the long, dry days of summer, the Australian
public holds
its collective breath in a superstitious reluctance to give
voice to the emotive word 'bushfire.'
Begun in 1997, the continually evolving Scent Bottle series
has now consumed Mount's attention for a greater period than
any other single body of work. The sculptural pieces for Fire
mark a shift from the soaring, fluid and brilliantly-coloured
scent bottles of recent years, with their risky, vertiginous,
punctuation mark-like flourishes.
Out of both necessity and desire, Mount has from the outset
frequently fashioned his own tools of trade and in his latest
series, he intensifies his experimentation with the crayons
he has developed specifically to draw on glass.
Each colour is applied separately by hand and then fired in
order to render the markings permanent. Flames appear to scale
and spiral around the stylised, conical stoppers of Fire's scent
bottles, which plunge elegantly to tapering metal spikes of
an abraded earthiness.
Mount's overscaled stopper forms are derived from the shape
of the plumb-bob, a traditional measuring tool of the mason's
trade.
With its confluence of symmetry, beauty and usefulness it
represents for Mount not only a touchstone to centuries of
hand crafting tradition, but also most closely encapsulates
Mount's own creative imperative.
Assembling the scent bottle components in a striking conjunction
of the experimental and the historical, Mount offsets the
expressive hand markings of his conical forms with the more
traditional élan of the vessel components, which reveal
the dazzling extent of his (battuto, inciso et al) technical
vocabulary. Concomitant with the warmer palette of the Fire
series, the sleekly polished aluminium sections of recent
scent bottle groupings have been superseded by the rich reddish-brown
tones of weathered and rusted steel - the colour of the Australian
desert. The glowing red, tangerine and golden hues are redolent
not only of the Australian landscape and the spectacular colours
of autumn, but with the pencilled swirls and curlicues of
flames, they conjure the
dramatic striations of a blazing sunset.
At the forefront of the studio glass movement in Australia
since the 1970s, Mount has said in reference to his chosen
medium. "I love its glassiness, its fluidity, the way
that you can work it, but it always stays at arm's length
... You can work with its clarity, with the colour, with its
reflectivity, with the shininess of it ... I like making it
sensuous. I like making it dangerous."
Fire is dangerous on several levels, since with his gestural
markings on glass, Mount has effectively dispensed with the
customary arm's length detachment of the glass blower, thereby
stepping outside the usual terms of engagement. Both the volatility
of the medium itself and the frisson of danger associated
with fire - in contrast with the other three elements, earth,
air and water - are paralleled by Mount's willingness to take
risks, to push the boundaries, to literally play with fire.
Wendy Walker © May 2003
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