Oracle Playground

Oracle Playground (2024) is an exploration of the relationship between materials and the meanings we imbue them with. Metal-smithing and glass blowing are used as processes with which to explore themes that include portals, ritual and alchemy.

This series comprises hybrid organic forms, crafted with metal and glass, that evoke dualities such as pleasure and discomfort, or containment and release. Each piece serves as a container of stories, emotion and memory, where expanding bubbles of glass push against the constraints of forged metal. Through these material dynamics, the forms embody the tensions and contradictions inherent in the human experience.

With an intuitive and playful approach to material, the finished works are visceral, inviting the viewer into another world, whilst reminding them of the act of making itself. The labour involved in the act of making – forging metal, and breathing into molten glass – itself becomes a ritual, a spiritual practice that deepens our connection to the material world. 

‘Notes on Reciprocity’ was a group show curated by Claire de Carteret and exhibited at Stanley Street Gallery, Darlinghurst in August 2024. The exhibition featured the works of Chrystal Rimmer, Laura De Carteret, Sibylla Robertson, Tango Conway Hugh Crowley.

Drawing from the text ‘on weaving a basket’ by anthropologist Tim Ingold and lyrics from Lauryn Hill’s album ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’, the exhibition is interested in the relationship that grows from spending quality time with material, exploring mutuality in processes of art making where, “mind is not above, nor nature below; if we ask where mind is, it is in the weave of the surface itself” and in this sense brings attention to how ideas don’t always happen in our heads, they are not strictly cognitive; intuition and serendipity are precious forces and we are situated in an ecology of material and the possibility of reciprocity in this is beautiful.

“For makers have to work in a world that does not stand still until the job is completed, and with materials that have properties of their own and are not necessarily predisposed to fall into the shapes required of them, let alone stay in them indefinitely” - Ingold

Exhibition Essay by Rebecca Hall
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