Craft / “the tender”. Jacqueline Bradley. Canberra Glassworks, until March 27.  Reviewed by MEREDITH HINCHLIFFE.

JACQUELINE Bradley is a Canberra sculptor who generally works in fabrics, timber, and bronze. After having been successful in her application to become an artist-in-residence at the Canberra Glassworks, this exhibition has works combing glass with the other materials.

Bradley describes her practice as process-driven, and herself a “tactile maker” used to handling her materials.

This artist-in-residence program, funded by the Australia Council for the Arts, provides time and space for artists. They can explore ideas and new materials without having to worry about making sufficient money to survive. As Bradley told me, having time to investigate glass, learning what it could do and what she could do with it, and how it could add to her repertoire, was incredibly beneficial. She could just “play with the material”. Bradley found that it holds the colour and clarity of fruit in sunlight, and the ability to stretch and form organically through processes of heat and movement.

“Over the course of the residency, I tested and experimented with ways to echo and repeat forms through moulds, casting and stamping. I have recreated objects again and again in multiple versions, just as fruit is recreated on the tree and a stone has the potential to create orchards everywhere,” she said.

Much of Bradley’s work in the past 18 months or so has focussed on the peach, representing the phases of growing, ripening and then rotting. The title of the exhibition “the tender” refers to flesh, both human and fruit engaging our senses of sight, smell and touch.

When a peach pit breaks in half, each half is different, representing a positive and negative. Drawing on the functional aspect of glassmaking, Bradley is showing two drinking glasses titled “Halves”. These can be made in multiples, like the peaches in the base of each piece.

A timber bracket holds seven rings of pulled, clear glass. They look as though they are waiting to be taken from the wall and twirled around a body, moving in time to some unheard music. The joining of each end of the glass is the important point to look at.

In “Four Stones” a steel bracket holds a piece of grey, cast glass. Four peach pits, or stones, have been cast across the top of the glass. There is faint blocking in the glass, representing a patchwork quilt.

Bradley was keen to try all forms of making in glass – and there are many. She made a pale pink crown – Cherry Crown – in flameworked glass, supported on a steel bracket.

The installation of this exhibition plays with viewers. Two stamps Bradley made from bronze for use in her glass, sit on top of what looks like an old cushion. They are simple, practical tools. Two other works might escape the reader’s gaze – a thin red line in glass across the gallery floor, and a piece of glass propped against a window.

Artist-in-residence programs are a most important part of the work of the Australia Council. This exhibition demonstrates how beneficial it can be, for all artists. The Glassworks is keen to introduce glass as a material to established artists who work in other media and spread the knowledge of this fascinating material.

This residency has been a very successful iteration of the program.