Emma Varga: Fire-Water-Life

Wagga Wagga Art Gallery

Fire - Water - Life

Emma Varga

16 December 2023 - 17 March 2024 National Art Glass Gallery 1

‘Fire - Water - Life reflects the past twelve years of Varga’s research into environmental issues, where she seeks to communicate the beauty and fragility of our natural environment. In this exhibition Varga’s considers major global warming events; such as bushfire, coral reef bleaching and polar ice melts as a means to heighten our awareness on their devastating impact.’

Cover image: Revival #2, #4 & #8 2023 Page 2: Sunset Wreath 2019 2

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Emma Varga Born in Yugoslavia, the artist settled in Australia thirty years ago, where she has contributed to the development of art glass in Australia while continuing to exhibit internationally.

The artist is widely recognized for the creation of three dimensional images using a multiple layer fusing technique, examples of which are found in the National Art Glass collection.

Emma Varga. Wagga Wagga National Art Glass Gallery 4

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Rage 20-21-22 2022 pate de verre, slumped 6

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Fire – Water – Life celebrates the 50 year career and virtuosity of studio glass artist, Emma Varga. Born in Yugoslavia, the artist settled in Australia thirty years ago, where she has contributed to the development of art glass in Australia while continuing to exhibit internationally.

Exhibited here are works produced over the past dozen years in which the artist seeks to communicate the beauty and fragility of our natural environment. Reflecting upon major global warming events such as bushfire, coral reef bleaching and polar ice melts, the artist draws us close in our looking to reveal what we stand to lose as the climate warms and we fail to act.

Emma Varga is widely recognized for the creation of three dimensional images using a multiple layer fusing technique.

Highly complex creations, these works require immense technical skill. Varga first cuts thousands of glass pieces from clear and transparent coloured glass sheets. These are then combined with glass frits and stringers to create a three-dimensional piece. They are fused together in stages, a process that takes two weeks to fire and slowly cool. The works take a further two weeks to grind and polish each piece to perfection allowing the fine details trapped to be seen. Examples of Varga’s layered fusing technique are found both in this exhibition and within the collection of the National Art Glass Collection.

We are proud to present this survey of Emma Varga’s work and look forward to future opportunities to work with this esteemed artist practitioner as she continues to develop her work and technique

Dr Lee-Anne Hall Director Wagga Wagga Art Gallery 8

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Artist interview Wagga Wagga Art Gallery’s Programs & Engagement Officer Astrid Reed sat down with artist Emma Varga, during the installation of Varga’s new exhibition Fire - Water - Life.

Revival First Signs #1 2023 pate de verre, wall panel 10

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Interview

it connected immediately with fire and it was also the colour to express the civil war. It expresses fear, strong feelings, extreme joy and many other emotions. Because of that, I made a project, “The story about red” with several exhibitions and many artworks expressing everything through red. Then the blue. My studio is near the ocean. That’s the blue. And the sky. And then white has a special meaning from my childhood that might be clouds or just soft emotions or dreams. The colour depends on what kind of emotion I want to express.

See You In Hell is a major collaboration between Sydney AR: Could you tell me about your history and based artists, Louise Zhang and Jessica Bradford. This body experience with Wagga Wagga and the National Art of new work explores the artists’ Chinese heritage through Glass Collection? rubric of Diyu (Chinese Hell) as an organising framework for the exhibition’s physical build and conceptual underpinnings through which identity, religion and Chineseto mythology and EV: I arrived in Australia and wanted see iconology areimportant considered. about In creating Diyu the artists will everything glass in this country, employ their characteristic use of mixed media with pop and I think it was 1996 that I visited Wagga to and cross-cultural references – specifically, Chinese myth, see theconcepts glass collection. motifs, and belief. I was delighted with the

collection and very happy to be a part of this glass Visitors will be This immersed in anisexperience; a walk through community. country quite expansive, so I Hell, like noaround other. and I fell in love with Wagga and travelled the glass collection. It took only a few years until Zhang and Bradford have painting and sculptural practices Iwith gotsignificant my piecesynergies. into the This collection.

It was a piece collaboration will result in an about theinstallation fires in Canberra found it immersive inside the and Main people Gallery in consideration quite strong in expression. of outsider/insider identities. It was about fire and fear. It ended up here in the collection and ever since then I’ve been a friend of this Gallery.

AR: The exhibition shows your technical versatility as a glass artist. It strikes me that you tend towards two extremes in your chosen techniques. Your cubes are solid and geometric but your pate de verre large wall pieces and bowls are extremely fragile and organic. Why do you focus on these two very different processes?

Dr Lee-Anne Hall Director AR: You mentioned your ‘fire’ pieces and the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery

EV: In Europe, fifty years ago, I designed for glass blowers at a glass factory. I’d browse through the factory and learn about all the other techniques.

I didn’t use them all but I learnt about them so I could use them any time I decided. After a while, I was a bit bored by blown glass so I started to fuse.

When I arrived in Australia, I didn’t have a glass blowing studio like in the factory, and I was looking for something which would make me independent.

Fusing was that technique. You can do fusing on your kitchen table. You can put the kiln between

red glass and you use intense colour in a deeply considered way. This exhibition is installed very deliberately by colour. It moves from reds to oranges through to blues and eventually to the greens. What do these colours mean to you and why do they repeatedly appear in your work?

EV: So I have two favourite colours really, red which is fire and turquoise blue which is the ocean.

Originally I just liked working with red but then, 12

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the stove and the fridge and you can produce really large artworks. Some of the really large pieces I made in the kitchen kiln, so that’s how I started to do that.

could make really fragile little pieces which I could use to either incorporate between the layers in the cubes or put onto the panels as a textured feature.

‘Paste of glass’ is the English name. My technique is a bit different. I call it ‘borderline pâte de verre” It’s a very versatile technique and I’m working with that for the past 12 years and I can express completely different things. If you want to talk about the rage of fire and burnt trees, you can’t do that on cast glass but you can with pâte de verre. It is very textural.

I was also always dreaming about layers. You can’t do that in blown glass. I imagined making clear glass and three-dimensional images floating inside which cannot be done by casting because casting makes the glass boil and destroys every drawing. I had to figure out how to do that and couldn’t find anything, so I experimented and tested, tested and tested more and more cubes. Through testing, I figured out how to do the layers. It’s quite complex, but I figured it out and now I’m teaching that technique all over the world. You can imagine anything threedimensional and then put it in between the layers. It expresses a lot of things I want to do, but I do hate the grinding! Just imagine holding a twenty-kilo sculpture for hours to grind the edges.

When I don’t know what to do and I have free time, I just sit down and start a little boards (30 x 30 cm) and I sift glass bits through little stencils and fill the board and put that in my kiln. It’s like baking cookies for grandchildren. It’s fun, it’s joy. While it’s in the kiln for four hours, I prepare the next one and then the next one. I have many trays full of those elements piled up by the big stacks on my table and then I can sit down and have everything ready so I don’t have to stop. I might pick some small pink roses, some green leaves a larger rose, an olive leaf - It’s all there prepared for me to work.

Pure joy and no grinding whatsoever! It’s not much faster because you need time to prepare all the pieces that make up the work. It’s like hundreds and thousands. It all does make sense in my mind. But I’m not abandoning the big pieces and definitely not abandoning the cubes. The cubes are really like little sections from future work. It’s like a test, to make

AR: When did you start working in pâte de verre?

EV: I was looking for something which would be different and some twelve years ago when I had the exhibition “Into The Green” the gallery owner suggested I do something new and that opened the door for me. I experimented to use all my knowledge gathered as a student and in the factory. I made mosaics like little fingers. I made ten thousand little pieces, and then I started pâte de verre. I realised I 14

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it small enough that it can be fired in two days. SO simple. I test everything because I don’t learn from mistakes, I learn from testing. The tests are like little coasters 6 x 6cm and after a full week you have a pile or a full drawer of them. I pull them out and I join them. Some of them are naturally made for a cube and I just vary by colour or pattern and that’s how I make the cubes. I test how to mix colours, how to deal with the transparency because some colours are between transparent sheets of glass so covering purple with yellow makes it muddy, so I have to put white haze in between them.

comes this file of information.

AR: Since many of the original great artists of the the art class movement in the 1960s came out of the auto glass industry or industrial glass factories where they were trained in industrial glassmaking techniques, it makes so much sense that your background would have prepared you well for your career in art glass.

EV: Yes, It definitely gives you knowledge of technology and the general feeling of the immense possibilities of glass. A background of understanding the industrial applications of glass can really open so many doors for you artistically and gives your knowledge and possibility to do everything.

AR: Many people who visit the National Art Glass Gallery are surprised by the versatility of glass and have questions about technique and it is something visitors are curious about.

EV: Yes, That is crucial. I was fortunate in Europe to have the factory design work and actually learn the whole range. Even at university I studied ceramics, and ceramic glazes are actually glass so I studied for four years about silicates. There was no art glass movement at the time, of course. But when I began to make glass, I was prepared. I didn’t even know how much I knew. It was an amazing amount of knowledge. It gives you confidence. I don’t have any fear of glass. I don’t have fear that I’m going to ruin my kiln. I don’t have fear that the piece will be unsuccessful. I go into whatever I want to create with confidence. I have an idea, and immediately out

AR: Emma, I know you take a lot of photographs on your travels and it seems to me that your glass cubes are almost like snapshots of your memories and experiences of specific places. Your life, career and travels have taken you to many parts of the world. Places as varied as your birthplace, Ada (former Yugoslavia), the northern beaches of Sydney, the North Pole, Palm Springs, California and even Antarctica. How have your experiences of these places influenced your work?

EV: You are right. I like to travel. I criss-cross Europe every year for approximately three months 16

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visiting museums and then participate in exhibitions and symposia. I like nature, so I see a nice corner with grass growing through the rocks and I stop and photograph it. I collect thousands of photographs.

I traveled to Antarctica in 2012 and that was remarkable. I was blown away by the beauty and the grand scale. The ice, the mountains - everything was huge. High mountains covered with 3 km of thick ice.

Now, that ice is melting, and it will raise the level of the oceans 12 feet or more . I took 10,0000 pictures there and didn’t even look at them again because when I photograph something it’s embedding in my brain and I just remember it. I was totally inspired to make work about it based on those visual images in my brain.

Same thing when I went to the Grand Canyon with all those beautiful layers in the rocks. I came back with more than 2000 photographs, but they were mostly of trees plants and grass! I realised I had to make work around the plants because my interest is with them, more that with the rocks. It ended up in the exhibition, “Into the Green.” It shows the forgotten green, the little plant in the corner of the park, or the overgrown grass in the gardens of abandoned places. I made work about those remarkable plants which touch my heart.

AR: You are inspired to create by the beauty you see, but I know you are also deeply concerned about the environment; by rising sea levels, bushfires and war. The Wagga Wagga Art Gallery has devoted 2023 18

to environmental exhibitions and programming.

Could you speak to how your work in this exhibition expresses your own personal concern for the environment and for the world?

EV: The bushfires triggered the PTSD I have from the civil war in Yugoslavia. So my PTSD is not fear I have for myself. It’s the fear I have when my friends or family are in danger and I cannot help them. That, to me is like a nightmare. A therapist explained to me later that I actually did the right thing by working.

Expressing that in work is the crucial thing so that you don’t die, because you can die from stress. It will end up in a heart attack or cancer or alcoholism because you can’t bear the thoughts. As soon as I got my hands on glass, it just started to come out and it keeps coming and it’s endless. I had 4 years of that war, and then all the fires and other war that almost started in Iran a few years ago. The trauma of that news actually blocked me for three days, and then I knew that I had to go immediately into the studio and make some glass. I must make glass.

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Fire Bush #15 2023 pate de verre, slumped 20

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Emma Varga

b. 1952 Yugoslavia LIves and works in Sydney Sunset Over Lagoon 2023 fused, cast and polished 23cm x 14cm

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Emma Varga

b. 1952 Yugoslavia LIves and works in Sydney

Emma Varga

b. 1952 Yugoslavia LIves and works in Sydney Ocean Corals Alive #2 & Ocean Corals Bleaching 2023 pate de verre wall panel 4cm x 55cm

Ocean Blue Corals #2 & #3 2023 pate de verre slumped 8cm x 25cm

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Emma Varga

Emma Varga

Aussie Fern Bowl & Mysteries of the Lake 2023 pate de verre, slumped 10cm x 25cm, 12cm x 44cm

Revival #2, #4 & #8 2023 pate de verr, constructed 61cm x 15cm x 12cm, 50cm x 16cm x 16cm, 62cm x 16cm x 16cm

b. 1952 Yugoslavia LIves and works in Sydney

b. 1952 Yugoslavia LIves and works in Sydney

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Emma Varga

Emma Varga

b. 1952 Yugoslavia LIves and works in Sydney

b. 1952 Yugoslavia LIves and works in Sydney Little Rose Bowl 2023 pate de verre wall slumped 10cm x 25cm

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50 glass cubes 2023 fused, cast and polished 6cm x 6cm

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With thanks This exhibition is supported by CreateNSW

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Autumn Red of High Country 2023 pate de verre, slumped bowl 32

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Into the Green 2023 lampworked glass 25mm x 25mm Autumn Red of High Country 2023 pate de verre, slumped bowl 8cm x 26cm

Works in exhibition White Frost #3 2019 fused, cast, polished glass object 36cm x 46cm x 10cm Sunset Wreath 2019 fused, cast, polished glass object 43cm x 28cm x 5cm

Sunset Bowl 2023 pate de verre, slumped bowl 10cm x 24cm

Rage 20-21-22 2022 pate de verre slumped bowl 12cm x 48cm

Rage Dying Away #3 2023 pate de verre, slumped bowl 8cm x 25cm

Fire Bush #15 2023 pate de verre wall panel 49cm x 49cm

50 Glass Cubes 2023 fused, cast and polished 6cm x 6cm

Rage Dying Away #1 & #2 2023 pate de verre bowls 8cm x 25cm

Ocean Blue - Corals #1, #2 & #3 2023 pate de verre, slumped 8cm x 25cm

Rage #6 2023 pate de verre, constructed 62cm x 16cm

Ocean Corals Alive #2 2023 pate de verre, wall panel 4cm x 55cm

Rage #5 2022 pate de verre, constructed 61cm x 15cm

Ocean Corals Bleaching 2023 pate de verre, wall panel 4cm x 55cm

Ruby Red Sunset #3 012 fused, cast and polished 29cm x 12cm

Little Rose Bowl 2023 pate de verre slumped 10cm x 25cm

Sunset Over Lagoon #2 2012 fused, cast and polished 23cm x 14cm

Tropical Blue Corals 2023 pate de verre wall panel 49cm x 49cm

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Frozen #4 2014 fused, cast and polished 40cm x 26cm

Revival #4 2022 pate de verre, constructed 50cm x 16cm x 16cm

Revival First Signs #2, #3 & #4 2023 pate de verre, slumped 8cm x 25cm

Revival #8 2023 pate de verre, constructed 62cm x 16cm x 16cm

Antarctica – Floating Ice #1 & #2 2023 pate de verre wall panel 49cm x 49cm

Green Wreath #1 & #2 2021 fused, cast and polished 18cm x 18cm x 4cm

Underwater Green #1 2010 fused, cast and polished 10cm x 52cm

Underwater Lagoon 2022 fused, cast and polished 18cm x 18cm x 5cm

Coral Wreath - Blue 2019 fused, cast and polished 43cm x 28cm

Revival #5 2022 pate de verre, constructed 52cm x 15cm x 15cm

After Rain 2023 pate de verre wall panel 29cm x 29cm

Green Valley #2 2023 pate de verre, slumped 12cm x 46cm

Aussie Fern Bowl 2023 pate de verre, slumped 10cm x 25cm Mysteries of the Lake 2023 pate de verre, constructed 12cm x 44cm Revival First Signs #1 2023 pate de verre, wall panel 4cm x 55cm Revival #2 2022 pate de verre, constructed 61cm x 15cm x 12cm

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Fire - Water - Life Emma Varga Wagga Wagga Art Gallery 16 December 2023 – 17 March 2024

Wagga Wagga Art Gallery Morrow Street Wagga Wagga NSW 2650

W waggaartgallery.com.au P 02 6926 9660 E gallery@wagga.nsw.gov.au

Wagga Wagga Art Gallery is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.

Wagga Wagga Art Gallery is a cultural facility of Wagga Wagga City Council.