Emma Woffenden, Barrett Marsden Gallery, London

Emma Woffenden
Barrett Marsden Gallery, London
10 September - 9 October 2004

Emma Woffenden is widely acclaimed as one of Britain‘s most innovative and talented glass artists. Her haunting, enigmatic forms can be reminiscent of transient experiences that hover on the edge of consciousness, such as those which occur between waking and sleep. They are often presented as tableaux or in an installation context, with each autonomous element contributing to the whole. There can be a sense that these presences are on the cusp of transformation - that something vaguely unnerving is about to unfold.

Emma Woffenden employs a full range of glass-working techniques. The forms are variously blown, cast, slumped or fabricated from sheet glass and often combined with other materials. Each work is a distillation of references and her abstract, organic forms, in particular, touch a visceral nerve. These are cast in clear glass, then ground and polished, giving rise to a range of impressions: heaviness and solidity, transparency and magnification, sensuousness and luminosity.

The physical and evocative characteristics of the works are further heightened through her deliberate juxtaposition of opposites, the organic forms contrasting sharply with the more austere representations of man-made objects. The stark, minimal shapes of two faceless grandfather clocks are dark, but reflective. Their deep shadows rhythmically shift from side to side with the pendulum swing of an overhead light bulb, marking the passage of time in eerie silence.

EMMA WOFFENDEN, b. 1962, trained at West Surrey College of Art and Design, 1981-1984, and the Royal College of Art, 1991-1993. Alongside her studio based practice she has collaborated with Tord Boontje on the design and production of the award winning Transglas range of glassware and was curator of the exhibition Solid Air, Crafts Council Gallery, 2001 - 2002.

Examples of her work can be found in numerous public collections including the British Council, Belgium; Ernsting Glass Museum, Germany; Broadfield House Glass Museum; Brighton and Hove Museum; Victoria and Albert Museum; and the Crafts Council. Recent exhibitions (with accompanying publications) include a major solo show at the National Glass Centre, Sunderland (1999), and No Horizon, a series of site-sensitive installations created in response to the architectural spaces of Fabrica, Brighton; Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham; and Firstsite, The Minories, Colchester 2003 - 2004. Emma Woffenden is represented by Barrett Marsden Gallery.

BARRETT MARSDEN GALLERY
17-18 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DN
www.bmgallery.co.uk