Louis Grant works between studio glass and interdisciplinary practice, exploring the potential of traditional craft skills to push the boundaries of glass making and contemporary sculpture.
Glass is an amorphous solid, neither liquid nor solid. It is a fluid medium, constantly becoming and located at the precipice of neither “this” nor “that”. For Grant, these tensions allow the medium to provide a material voice to the queer experience. They are activated by scratches, colour inconsistencies and surface abrasions that illuminate the qualities of glass and amplify a play between flawlessness and imperfection.
‘awash’ brings together a collection of new works in which Grant pairs back materials to their pure, honest form, allowing the glass medium to be both fragile and robust. For Grant, the glass forms are an abstract exploration of queer experience and ideas of love, loss, celebration, desire, shame, nostalgia, and melancholy.
Grant says further: “awash is a darker, deeper dive into a fluid, queer seascape of emotions. The exhibition takes the ocean and water as starting points. Water becomes a conduit for connection between humans—sublime, with untamed power, yet so familiar, making up a large per cent of our bodily matter. The works hold a sense of stillness while also having motion. Here I think of tranquillity, peace, cleansing, ebbing, flowing, coursing, bubbling – the unpredictability and volatility of oceans and emotions, a fluid vastness that lies within us all.
—
Banner: Louis Grant, ‘guess I'm feeling unmoored’ 2022. Neon installed directly on wall. Neon fabrication by David Cooper. Image courtesy: the artist
