FUSE Glass Prize 2024 Winner Announced—Tom Moore

JamFactory is thrilled to announce that the winner of the 2024 FUSE Glass Prize is South Australian based artist Tom Moore.

This biennial non-acquisitive prize for Australian and New Zealand glass artists is Australasia’s richest prize for glass. It provides a platform for artists to push themselves and their work to new limits and focuses public attention on the importance of glass as a medium for contemporary artistic expression.

The works of twelve established and six emerging artists were selected as finalists by the 2024 judging panel. The 2024 judges are Grace Lai, Curator of Applied Arts and Design, Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum; Aimee Frodsham, Artistic Director, Canberra Glassworks; Rhana Devenport ONZM, Director, Art Gallery of South Australia; Matthew Curtis, Glass Artist and 2022 FUSE Glass Prize Winner; Brian Parkes, Chief Executive Officer at JamFactory.

The non-acquisitive $20,000 cash prize was awarded to Tom Moore for his piece Dandy Lion among the Antipodes (Handsome Duckling, Sweet Boots, Quadravian Cyclops, Dandy Lion & Kohl Canary), 2022 & 2023. Moore is a renowned glass artist based in Adelaide. His time is divided between working within the hot glass community at JamFactory, from his own home studio and at the University of South Australia as an Adjunct Research Fellow, where he is undertaking practical investigations in glass focusing on hybrid life-forms, humour and the anthropocene. Moore’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Gallery Of Modern Art, Brisbane, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. He was the focus of JamFactory’s ICON series in 2020, which was celebrated through a major national touring exhibition, Abundant Wonder, and has received a number of awards for his glass artworks.

“Tom is an established artist at the height of his creative powers. He has long been recognised as a leading proponent of traditional Venetian glass-blowing techniques, but in this virtuosic composition of beguiling characters, he has taken his work to new levels of intrigue and refinement. The chromatic gradation across the group and the multi-layered play with symmetry and absurdity give the work a compelling quality. The longer you look the more Moore you see!” the judges commented.

The David Henshall Emerging Artist Prize, providing $5,000 cash and a professional development residency at JamFactory valued at a further $5,000, was awarded to Canberra-based artist Emeirely Nucifora-Ryan for her entry Processed, July 2023, 2023.

Nucifora-Ryan completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) at the Australian National University’s School of Art and Design. In 2019, she participated in Richard Wheater’s Neon Green Futures Masterclass at Canberra Glassworks where she developed her passion for neon. Although her practice uses a variety of materials, Nucifora-Ryan is drawn to glass, as she finds a sense of wonder in the properties of glass through its ability to refract, reflect, and transmit light. The inert nature of glass allows it to house noble gases and through the process of cold cathode lighting (CCL) it can create a variety of effects.

Judge Rhana Devenport said “Emeirely Nucifora-Ryan’s piece is an ambitious work of great elegance and visual economy. The deceptively simple motif of the neon circle belies the difficulty of its making by hand. The patterned frieze of illuminated forms registers a diaristic meditation on time with the spaces marking the days when the artist did not complete a circular form. Nucifora-Ryan is an impressive emerging artist who is engaging with an expanded take on glass with confidence and conceptual rigour.”

Established in 2016, the biennial FUSE Glass Prize is supported in 2024 by founding donors for the prize, Jim and Helen Carreker along with David McKee AO and Pam McKee, Diana Laidlaw AM, Nicholas Linke, Maia Ambegaokar and Joshua Bishop, Sonia Laidlaw and Susan Armitage. The David & Dulcie Henshall Foundation have also generously supported the Emerging Artist Category of FUSE through The David Henshall Emerging Artist Prize.

The exhibition of finalist’s works will be shown at JamFactory from 10 May – 7 July 2024 followed by a tour to the ANU School of Art & Design Gallery, Canberra from 8 August – 6 September 2024 and Australian Design Centre, Sydney from 3 October – 13 November 2024.

For more information, visit jamfactory.com.au