JamFactory ICON Jessica Loughlin: of light

JamFactory’s ICON series celebrates the achievements of South Australia’s most influential visual artists working in craft-based media. Jessica Loughlin is one of Australia’s most internationally acclaimed glass artists and is renowned for her highly innovative technical approach to kilnformed glass. A studio glass artist for over twenty-five years, Loughlin creates ethereal kilnformed glass artworks that explore her fascination with the beauty of emptiness and her extensive research into light and space.

About the artist
A studio glass artist for over twenty-five years, Loughlin has dedicated her practice to the pursuit of capturing the transient qualities of light and the quiet sense of contemplation it provokes in the viewer.

Known for her understated aesthetic, Loughlin takes her artistic cues from the vast, flat landscapes and salt lakes of South Australia. She began her artistic exploration of the horizon line in her student years and is particularly drawn to the inherent quietness and stillness of the land. “To me, the Australian landscape is defined by its vast space and a sense of distance,” Loughlin says. “Being out in a vast space creates stillness and space within my mind, and it is portraying this stillness that has remained a constant aim within my work.” The natural splendour of the salt lakes of Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre and Lake Gairdner have long provided Loughlin with particular inspiration due to their infinitely immersive quality. Rarely filled with water, the minimalist landscapes of these remote salt lakes seemingly fuse land and sky as one infinite plain that completely immerses the viewer on a physical, emotional and spiritual level. In Loughlin’s own words: The boundary between air, water, and ground blurred. Light became the landscape, and I looked down into the sky. It was as if I was suspended in space… Landscapes of space, reduced to sky, land and light, give little visual reference, nothing for the mind to hang onto — so the sensory system fires up to find a reference, to locate the body — and those references come from within.

Opening Event
6pm Friday 26 April
Join us for the opening of JamFactory ICON Jessica Loughlin: of light, explore the exhibition and enjoy light refreshments with complimentary bubbles from Dee Vine Estate.