Water Glass

Solo exhibition: Jonathan Smart Gallery, Christchurch. November 21- 16 December 2023

Artist Statement on the Gallery Wall:

Watercolours on paper by Mark Braunias and glass work made in collaboration with Jarred Wright.

During the Covid lockdown of 2020, I received a DM on my Instagram account from @jw_glassart . I had no idea who this person was. A Jarred Wright from Queensland had wanted to know if he could use one of my translucently painted forms to make a glass work piece. I was immediately intrigued. Back in 2017 when I first started to investigate washes of color to create the illusion of fluid dimensionality, I recognized their glass-like 2D quality. I began to exploit that sensibility and it informed my development with shape. So it seemed like a very natural transition to literally make ‘glass’. When I discovered that as well as his own glass art practice, Jarred also worked for laboratories making medical instruments/apparatus, it made perfect sense to let the hot air blow.

Since the early 1990’s, I have been engaged in an obsessive quest to transform animal and plant biology into a chimera of sorts by cross breeding invented forms with an assortment of pop culture iconography. It’s a strange alchemy of nature and social evolution, as if created inside a Petri dish of the imagination. Not particularly about surrealism as such, but a desire to make ‘real’ forms that may have existed in our past or in the possible distant future. Ancient/Futuristic specimens.

In terms of my process with these drawings, I begin each work from the inside. There are no preliminary pencil outlines. Using a dripping wet brush of colour and water, I slowly work to the outside edge. The white of the paper is activated as space, and my controlled contour is crucial to the overall physicality of the shapes. Like a fluid-immersed alchemist, I attempt to bring these creatures to life. It’s less Shelley’s Frankenstein and slightly more Mr Magoo’s plasma fully formed. Within a pictorial context however, this body of work places an overt emphasis on the use of line. In this instance though, the line is essentially invisible. Its existence resides in the subtle collision of two opposing spaces. A figure/ground relationship nuanced.

These studies were then WeTransferred to Brisbane. I gave no exact specifications for how the collaborative transformative stage should be undertaken. Jarred Wright independently selected certain works he considered would suit his processes. The 3D pieces in this show are, by association, interpretive responses. They are not copies or a replication of the drawings. They take on a new life of their own through the methodology of glass blowing and Jarred’s informed decision-making. Feedback is given at various stages, and at times implemented into new works. Shamrock and Teak on the walls of this gallery are a specific example of that collaborative engagement.

This is the 2nd iteration of this collaboration. The first occurred in 2021 and was also exhibited here at the Jonathan Smart Gallery on Buchan Street.