CANBERRA and Adelaide have always punched above their weight on the Australian glass-art scene and this has been confirmed in the news that five “emerging” artists from Canberra Glassworks and five from JamFactory in Adelaide have had work selected for the “Made in Australia” exhibition in Berlin’s Benhadj & Djilali Galerie.

The Canberra artists are Luke Chiswell, Rose-Mary Faulkner, Emeirely Nucifora-Ryan, Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello and Nicholas Doran Adams; those from the JamFactory are Emma Young, Renato Perez, Kristel Britcher, Liam Fleming and Billy Crellin.

Canberra’s Jenni Kemarre Martiniello, who turned to glass in 2008 as part of the Indigenous Textile Artists Group, was the winner of the 2013 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award for her work “Golden Brown Reeds Fish” and will exhibit related work in Berlin. She describes her work as representing “a cross section of the works I have developed under the ‘GlassWeave’ project which are inspired by ancient traditional Aboriginal heritage practices and the flora of my grandmother’s traditional Arrernte country”.

The “Made in Australia” exhibition will be presented from June 29 to July 13 and the show is to be coordinated by Berlin Glas, who were involved in the selection process.

Australian contemporary glass ties with Germany were first initiated through the late glass artist Klaus Moje from Hamburg, founding head of the Glass Workshop at the ANU School of Art. As well, the founder and director of Berlin Glas, Nadania Idriss, has strong ties to Australian glass artists.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is supporting this project as part of their ‘Australia now Germany’ 2017 program.