Aunty Carolyn Briggs welcoming the crowd at Vivien Anderson Gallery

Maree Clarke’s generous acknowledgement of the glassblowers who made her work challenges us to question why makers are so often anonymous in artists’ works.

It was a dark, bitterly cold winter evening in Melbourne. All the more welcome was the crowded scene at Vivien Anderson Gallery. We were all here for the opening of Maree Clarke’s exhibition, In the Flicker of Light.

Feelings were high. Aunty Carolyn Briggs generously introduced us to the Bunurong world before handing it over to Maree Clarke. Maree acknowledged not only her loyal family, who helped with the production of her work, but also the team at Canberra Glassworks, who she ushered forward for crowd applause.

Maree Clarke at Pilchuck studio 2023. Photo courtesy of Kirstie Rea

The exhibition as a whole told a complex story. It begins with glass slides of river reeds that Maree uncovered at the University of Melbourne. Their cylindrical patterns lent themselves to the use of murrini glass, which Maree had discovered while a resident at Pilchuck glass workshop near Seattle. Also known as “millefiori” (“a thousand flowers” in Italian), this technique of glass cane comes from the island of Murano, in Venice. Glass is dipped into different colours, then stretched and cut into segments resembling rock candy. It’s a magical alchemy of contemporary craft.

As well as resembling the cylindrical river reed form, glass also has particular value in telling Indigenous stories. For Maree, the artefacts rendered in glass express not only the resilience of her culture, but also its fragility. As she states in the catalogue essay,

“We are one of the oldest continuing living cultures in the world, and if we don’t change and adapt, culture will die.  That’s why I love doing things like the glass shields, the glass canoe.  It’s still cultural practice—using different mediums—but still telling the same stories.”

The three-metre glass canoe was the “hero work” of the exhibition, enabled by her Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture in 2O23. This traditional vessel was segmented, transformed into glass, patterned with cell-like murrini forms inspired by the river reeds and hung in mid-air. The making process itself is a transformational journey that enables the past to be reconfigured into the present. The work is invested with the creativity, skills and resources of our time.

It was an epic process. Annette Blair extruded the murrini cane at Canberra Glassworks. Eight boxes of segments were then freighted to Maree in Melbourne, for her family to arrange in her fabled backyard. The boxes were then packed up and returned to Canberra where Tom Rowney and team used them to blow the components of the glass canoe. Specialist cold workers then cut the holes attached to the wire for suspension. After a trial run, everything was shipped to the gallery where the team regathered to install the show. Tom estimates that 14 people worked on the glass canoe.

But there’s a problem here. The joyful acknowledgement of the production process at the gallery opening is not always reflected in how the art is described in labels. It’s rare to find acknowledgement of the technicians who made the work.

I’ve been long puzzled by this secrecy. This anonymity seems built into our system. After all, capitalism creates a hierarchy of management over labour. Management controls the identity of products, particularly through branding, while labour remains hidden. This is part of a broader understanding of the world identified by Tim Ingold in Making as hylomorphism: “materiality as form-receiving passivity rather than form-taking activity”. Management provided the template that labour fills in.

This poses a challenge. In artistic production, does the realisation of a work have meaning in itself beyond the originality and resonance of the concept?

Glenn Adamson’s seminal book on craft theory, Thinking through Craft, is premised on the concept of “supplementarity”, which he derives from the philosophical school of deconstruction. The argument is that the art object depends on the frame which marks its separation from the world. The frame, however, is never actually part of the work itself. Adamson argues similarly that art requires craft in its production, but the role of craft is denied for the sake of preserving the autonomy of art from the world.

This denial seems particular to the visual arts. Execution is not anonymous in many other arenas. In sports, the player is seen as at least as important as the coach, as is the musician to the composer or the actor to the director. Craft history has many figures who did not make work themselves. Josiah Wedgewood acknowledged the work of John Flaxman as his “right-hand man” to develop iconic techniques such as jasperware.

In art, the making of the work is often closely kept secret. But it needn’t be so and we should press the issue. I was once in conversation with Ai Wei Wei at the opening of his exhibition at the NGV. The discussion was going happily until I casually asked him who made his porcelain flowers. This provoked an immediate flurry as minders quickly whisked him away. Clearly, the making of the work was not to be discussed.

It need not be scandalous. Back in 2005, I edited an issue of Artlink, Handmade: The New Labour, about the technicians behind the work of successful artists such as Ricky Swallow. I felt it important at the time to avoid the argument that their work was a “scam” because they didn’t make it themselves. Rather, we need to acknowledge the artist’s ability to find the right skills, nurture their talent and collaborate productively.

The glass blower Tom Rowney is himself an exhibiting artist, with a solo exhibition coming up at Sabbia Gallery later this year. He also cannot work alone without his team, especially Annette Blair. I asked Tom if he felt makers should be acknowledged. “Yes, where credit due is important”. But part of the problem for him is the large number of people involved. “Where do you stop? It’s like the restaurant chef who gets the kudos, but then there’s also the sous chef, kitchen hands and even dishwashers. Everyone plays a role.”

Makers like Tom do not seek the limelight. It’s enough for him to work with an inspiring artist like Maree Clarke. For crafts, this is not only a matter of fairness, it plays a role in the sustainability of skills. Craft should be valued for its relational role in meeting the needs of others. Not everyone can be a famous artist like Patricia Piccinini, but many might find pride in being one of her technicians, like Liz Rule who delicately inserts hairs into her sculptures. Making their work visible can encourage a new generation to invest in learning these skills.

Change is in our hands. Given commodity capitalism seems hard-wired into our world, we are unlikely to see galleries themselves choose to acknowledge those who made the works. But it doesn’t stop us from asking. It could be a polite question to the gallery attendant, a conversation with the artist at the opening,  or a curious Instagram comment. Eventually, galleries will discover that this information adds value to the appreciation of the world.

As well as an artist of boundless creativity and energy, Maree Clarke generously acknowledges all those who help her make her work. We can celebrate in her work not only the resilience of her culture but also the hospitality it affords. We’re all in it together.

Maree Clarke, Murrini canoe 2024, hand cut and finished, blown Murrini glass, stainless cables 300 x 30.5 x 17 cm, suspended height variable, Image courtesy of Simon Anderson Photography

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