FUSE Glass Prize Winners Announced 2024

JamFactory is thrilled to announce that the winner of the 2024 FUSE Glass Prize is South Australian-based glass 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 David Henshall Emerging Artist Prize, providing $5,000 cash and a professional development residency at JamFactory, was awarded to Emeirely Nucifora-Ryan for her entry Processed, July 2023, 2023.

Tom Moore
2024 FUSE Glass Prize Winner

Tom Moore is a 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.

“This group of glass characters are the result of continued exploration into representational blown glass. They are influenced to varying degrees by vessel-making traditions, making particular reference to historical figurative bottles. Two of the five are theoretically usable as containers, though intentionally impractical, ludicrously delicate and not dishwasher safe. The others, though partially hollow, depart from the utilitarian vessel altogether. They continue to function as mischievous ornaments that might provoke curiosity about the cultural legacy of craft processes. These objects demonstrate respect for and dedication to ancient decorative techniques developed in Venice. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to learn and practice these methods and am conscious of how lucky and unlikely it is to be working in this way on this land. The antipodean nature of glassmaking in this country is central to the reason that I make characters with their legs in the air. Of course, I also find them delightful companions.”

Dandy Lion among the Antipodes. (Handsome Duckling, Sweet Boots, Quadravian Cyclops, Dandy Lion & Kohl Canary), 2022 & 2023
glass, silver leaf and HXTAL epoxy to attach the stoppers to the bottle toppers
1300 x 230 x 405
Photo: Grant Hancock

Emeirely Nucifora-Ryan
2024 David Henshall Emerging Artist Prize Winner

Born on Gadigal land (Sydney) and raised on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land (Canberra), Emeirely Nucifora-Ryan completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) at the Australian National University’s School of Art and Design in 2018. In 2019, Nucifora-Ryan participated in Richard Wheater’s Neon Green Futures Masterclass at the 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.

“This body of work was created over seven months. My aim was to produce a circle of bent glass every day from the time I was chosen to exhibit to the time of installation, allowing time for the tubes to be bombarded and filled with inert gas. This work allowed me to practise the skill of bending glass into a particular form, tracking my progress from April through October. A circle is understood to be the hardest shape to bend - an experience that the earliest circles I bent are testament to. Focussing on this one shape, my aim was to capture the progress of daily practice and document the reality of a working artist: the empty spaces representative of the days when life got in the way of that practice. The pure quantum of light created by the scale of the combined pieces produces a version of the Ganzfeld effect. By denying the viewer any blue light, the emitted hues can vary, causing the eye to doubt what it sees. The resulting piece Processed, July 2023 explores how process and ritual contribute as a journey does to the final destination, where a tangible sensory experience can be afforded through profound and disciplined introspection.”

Processed, July 2023, 2023
glass, neon, transformers.
2100 x 120 x 1500
Photo: Brenton McGeaChie