Vicki Fanning with her work at the Sarjeant Gallery. Photo / Supplied
Vicki Fanning with her work at the Sarjeant Gallery. Photo / Supplied
At Sarjeant on the Quay, three abstract sculptures in glass seem to move, fixed in the moment yet also morphing in different directions.
Positioned on shiny black plinths, the clear, shimmering Borosilicate Glass forms are covered in scales, tendrils and spikes.
Vicki Fanning's exhibition "Upon a Moment" evokes a kind of frosty wonderland that may seem more akin to the Kingdom of Narnia's White Witch than The Whanganui Glass Company in Keith Street where her grandfather worked, or the glass oscillators that her father made.
But it's also the virtual world of this digital era in which images, thoughts, and words, are in constant motion, arriving, leaving, in transmission via fibre optic technology.
"Fanning's work explores this mind-bending magic with each of the sculptures resembling imagery in motion; the forms are elongated, blurry and sharp at the same time, glitching from a virtual to a real space," said the Sarjeant's curator and public programme manager Greg Donson.
Fanning drew inspiration from stencils for glass doors she found in her grandfather's Wanganui Glass Co catalogue of Sandblast Design. Designs included various iterations of "the stag", the basis for her "beast" sculpture, as well as dancers, plants and art deco designs.
Wanganui Glass Co catalogue of Sandblast Design. Photo / Supplied
All her recent work has been about digital technology and the use of fibre optics. In these artworks, she uses the idea of glass as a "metaphor for the invisible". It is a barrier and also a conduit, between private and public worlds, the concrete and the virtual.
"It is related to travelling and abstraction, the shadows cast by the door down the hallway, light as time and light as shape making – movement in a moment. What we see is not necessarily the truth of what is actually happening. It is abstract and seen at a particular point or moment, not in a sequence, like in a book. There are unregulated, awkward moments when the object is viewed. It also has this fluidity – all the broken down pieces are moving, changing."
She drew the 2D door designs on cardboard and cut them out then traced the shadows they cast, repeating the process with the cardboard shapes until she had a pattern from which to create 3D objects.
Fanning is delighted that her exhibition and the research she did has brought to public attention the work of The Wanganui Glass Company. Established in Keith Street in the 1920s as the Wanganui Glass Bevelling and Silvering Works by Messrs Morgan and Sauvarin, the company operated until the mid-1980s, furnishing houses, commercial buildings and cars with a range of products – bevelled mirrors of any shape or size, "windscreens, side shields and headlight glasses for motor cars, bevelled glasses for doors for bungalows, business houses and public buildings, bevelled shelves for shop windows and show cases, in fact, anything and everything in the silvering and glass bevelling business".
Richard Green's father RHB (Dick) Green worked in the art department, designing lettering for sandblasting and lead lighting. He later rose in the ranks to manage the company. Richard himself worked there after school doing "menial" jobs.
"It was a remarkable enterprise ... a jumbled structure out-of-place in residential Keith Street, staffed by a great mix of characters, yet its output graced residential and commercial architecture throughout the country," Richard remembers.
Whanganui Glass Co building on the corner of Keith and Copeland streets. Photo / Supplied
One of Richard's tasks was to re-do the worn-out stencils - designs outlined in rows of pricked holes on strong paper sheets.
"A cloth bag of Prussian blue banged onto the holes transferred the design through as rows of small dots. I spent weeks mindlessly pricking holes with an awl, but was rewarded decades later on seeing a stag-at-bay on a Paeroa front door bearing the nick in his ear that I had added by way of a personal trademark."
The Sarjeant has records of the catalogue and research that Fanning has done, including newspaper articles about the company.
"It fits in really well with the Unesco City of Design, I'm really happy that the Sarjeant has this permanent record," said Fanning.
Whanganui is the only city in New Zealand to have a place in the Unesco Creative Cities Network of 246 cities. The designation recognises the city's historic and contemporary contributions to art and creativity.
Upon a Moment, Vicki Fanning's exhibition is on at Sarjeant on the Quay until July 31.
