Liquid States

Marcel Hoogstad Hay + Rowena Boyd

12 – 23 April 2023

Saint Cloche is very pleased to present another resonant Pas De Deux for 2023 with a cool curatorial fusion between Marcel Hoogstad Hay and Rowena Boyd with LIQUID STATES.

Marcel, an Adelaide based glass artist, is very interested in astrophysics and quantum mechanics. His work addresses the quantum nature of the universe and our perceptions of time and space. Using traditional Venetian cane techniques, he creates complex patterns in glass that illustrate and explore these ideas.

Australian artist, Rowena Boyd intensifies this exploration of sensory hierarchies with a more fluid, multimodal concept of the senses.

Liquid States

“I am interested in the ways we perceive space, time and matter, and how we situate ourselves in the world as we move through it.

Working with traditional Venetian glass cane techniques I create complex, gestural patterns. These lines of cane allude to paths traversed and how physical forces disrupt and distort these paths. They reference the nature of things when viewed at a quantum scale, but also topography and how we might picture ourselves moving across the Earth’s surface.

For this work I have used mirrored surfaces to further illustrate the idea of distortion, which is highlighted by the disruption of the linework as it follows the contours of these amorphous forms. The reflective surfaces of these objects invite the viewer to engage with the work, and to contemplate the self and our place in the universe.”

– Marcel Hoogstad Hay

“Crafted through a process of accreting thousands of thin brushstrokes of molten beeswax and resin upon a support, I form vibrant gradients of colour in delicate ridges, rhythmically layered upon one another in a manner that alludes to organic patterning. These surfaces suggest gravity, skin, pressure, liquid, solid, and molten forms.

I try to prompt the viewer to think about physical sensations and material ambiguities, my experimental works provoke the desire to touch, stirring sensory intimacy, curiosity, and pleasure.

My paintings operate in the visceral sweet spot that language can never quite perfectly articulate, resonating within the body and at one’s fingertips.”

– Rowena Boyd

About Marcel Hoogstad Hay

Marcel Hoogstad Hay is an Australian artist working primarily with blown glass. He received his Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours in 2012 from the Glass Workshop at the ANU School of Art and Design, Canberra, and in 2014 completed the Associate Training Program at Jam Factory, Adelaide. Marcel has undertaken residencies at Berlin Glas, Salem State University, and ANU School of Art and Design, and in 2015 was awarded the Endeavour Executive Fellowship from the Australian Government. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, holds work in the Ernsting Foundation Glass Museum collection in Germany, and in 2020 was a finalist in the FUSE Glass Prize.

Within his practice Marcel creates work that references ideas that appear in astrophysics and quantum mechanics, and our perceptions of these concepts. He is fascinated by the way space time is influenced by the physical forces in the universe and, using the material and optical qualities of glass, he explores this idea through the distortion of pattern and form.

About Rowena Boyd

Rowena Boyd is an Australian artist currently living and working on Kaurna land in Adelaide/ Tarntanya. Through her experimental painting practice, she explores questions about multisensory perceptual processes, focusing on the links between vision and the somatic senses. Using encaustic paint as her primary medium, Boyd delves into the porous boundaries and nuanced relationships between different areas of sensory understanding, aiming to make art that engenders a deeply resounding sensory or visceral response. She is interested in dissecting what painting, particularly abstraction, can reveal about knowledge, perceptual mechanisms, and sensory experience, and is fascinated by the intersection between art and science.

Rowena completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts with First Class Honours at the Australian National University School of Art in 2012. In 2015 and 2016 she lived in Berlin, Germany, undertaking an artist residency at the Institut für Alles Mögliche. In 2017 she completed a three-month artist residency at Bolivia Sostenible in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and also spent four months as the resident studio artist at La Calera in Oaxaca, Mexico. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally, and her most recent solo exhibitions include Little Oceans at Floating Goose Studios Inc. (2020, Adelaide SA), Tender Slopes at FELTspace ARI (2020, Adelaide SA) and Waves of Honey and Other People’s Houses at ANCA Gallery (2019, Canberra ACT).