JamFactory Icon Tom Moore: Abundant Wonder
JamFactory’s Icon series celebrates the achievements of South Australia’s most influential visual artists working in craft-based media. Tom Moore is one of Australia’s leading glass artists and over the course of his career has carved out a singular voice within Australian glass art making. Although working in the ancient craft of blown glass, Moore’s images, narratives and settings are distinctly contemporary. His engaging, sophisticated and technically challenging hybridised animal/plant sculptures and the fantastical worlds they inhabit are deeply embedded in the history of glass making and scientific discovery. Through the taming of the molten liquid material of glass, Moore creates complex diorama worlds within which his fanciful hybridised protagonists act and interact. In his creation of a universe that seems as ominous as it is beautiful, Moore’s artworks are disarmingly playful in their use of narrative to critique the pressing social and environmental concerns of our contemporary epoch.
A rigorous and technically masterful glass blower, Moore possesses skills that have been refined through what can be considered akin to a traditional glass blowing apprenticeship, in which techniques are acquired through continuous making, especially through the repetition of production-based crafting. Gaining a strong technical foundation through thousands of hours of disciplined production of bottles, jugs and vases, Moore’s characteristically fantastical creations are inspired by unusual historical objects, such as zoomorphic vessels that combine a functional object and the representation of an animal, and trick glasses that are intentionally confusing and difficult to use. In Moore’s words:
“The works combine historical glass forms with themes of interconnection that liquefy the borders between animal, vegetable, mineral and personal. The resulting characters such as plantbirds and pototofishcars echo the metamorphic quality of glass — a material well known for its paradoxical nature and aptitude for creating optical illusions.”
Reaching back in time to the Renaissance, the golden age of technological advancement in Venetian cane glass techniques, Moore works with a multitude of traditional cane patterns such as ballotini, zanfirico and reticello to create the dancing and colourful patterns within the bodies and appendages of his lifeforms. An ardent environmentalist, Moore’s recent postgraduate studies have caused him to look closely at the environmental impact of glassmaking on the planet as well as the causes of climate change as a global concern. In the artist’s own words:
“Glass has enabled many technological, social and aesthetic benefits. Unfortunately, glassmaking also contributes to climate change and environmental degradation. I seek to address the contradiction of utilising a particularly resource-depleting and polluting traditional craft to address troubling ecological issues with hope and humour. Consequently, I am not interested in presenting depictions of nature that are simply beautiful.”
Moore’s playful exhibitions are intended, as the artist puts it, “to be marvellous and entertaining, presenting a playful subversion of order and rejection of rationality”. Striving to invigorate the audience experience, Moore embraces new technologies through collaboration with digital photographers and animators. His aim is to produce exhibitions that are challenging in content and form while offering the audience an inspiring visual experience.
Tom Moore was born in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory in 1971 and currently lives and works in Adelaide, South Australia. He graduated from the Australian National University’s Canberra School of Art in 1994, trained in production techniques at JamFactory until 1997 and worked as the Production Manager in JamFactory’s Glass Studio for 15 years. In 2019, he was awarded a PhD at the University of South Australia for his thesis Agents of Incongruity: glassmaking embraces nonsense to navigate monsters, wonder and dread. This PhD was focused on undertaking practical investigations of glass and mixed media, focusing on hybrid lifeforms and Anthropocene. Moore has received a number of major prizes, including the 2013 Ranamok Prize of Contemporary Glass, the 2013 Tom Malone Prize and the 2014 City of Hobart Art Prize. His artworks can be found in many prominent public collections including the Museum of American Glass, New Jersey, USA; the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of South Australia, GOMA Brisbane, Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Powerhouse Museum.
JamFactory Icon Tom Moore: Abundant Wonder will tour nationally and is accompanied by the monograph Tom Moore: Abundant Wonder with essays by Dr. Lisa Slade, Adrian Franklin and Mark Thomson.
JamFactory Icon Tom Moore: Abundant Wonder is showing at JamFactory Adelaide from 9 October I – 22 November 2020.
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