AHC and Glas — Museum of Glass Art enters a perennial collaboration
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Art Hub Copenhagen and Glas — Museum of Glass Art in Ebeltoft are situated in different parts of Denmark and each institution has its own specific field. With a new collaboration over the next four years, they will give several visual artists the opportunity to boost their artistic practice by creating works in glass for the first time. The first exhibition will present works by Danish artist Tove Storch.
In the eyes of many, glass is categorized as a material, which is traditionally used in the field of crafts. However, today more and more visual artists from the younger generation are interested in working with the hot, fluid material.
As art institutions, both Art Hub Copenhagen (AHC) and Glas — Museum of Glass Art in Ebeltoft work to develop the visual arts and promote favorable conditions for artists. Titled Liquid Exchange, the two institutions have therefore decided to invite selected artists, who have not worked with glass before, to explore the relevance of the material for their practice and to show the potential of glass as an artistic material in a series of exhibitions.
Jacob Fabricius, who is artistic director at AHC, sees great potential in the collaboration and hopes that the institutional exchange can help further develop the work of talented artists:
”AHC was founded to create the best conditions for the visual arts to find time and new spaces and languages in which to develop. Through a four-year collaboration with Glas, we can help give artists not only a new exhibition platform, but also a new environment for experimenting with material, concept, and context. Glas is a very professional institution and has good facilities – also for artists, who do not normally work with glass. We look forward to seeing how the artists explore and challenge their own practice as well as traditional craftmanship creating works with a spectrum of contemporary elements.”
From liquid mass to solid form
The collaboration between Glas and AHC runs from 2024 to 2027 and will result in four exhibitions – three solo exhibitions and one group exhibition, all of which will be part of Glas’ exhibition programme.
The selected artists will have the opportunity to experiment with the material in Glas’ studio in close collaboration with the museum’s glassblower Chris Lowry. This is also where the artists will develop and produce completely new works, which will be
presented to Glas’ visitors, both as they are being created and when they are finished.
In addition, the collaboration between Glas and AHC will also be a cross-institutional experiment, which will, among other things, explore common challenges and new forms of collaboration between artist and institution. Mikkel Hammer Elming, who is director of Glas — Museum of Glass Art, explains:
”With Liquid Exchange, we would like to introduce glass to visual artists and help them explore it as an artistic material – and then, of course, give a diverse audience the opportunity to see works by some of today’s most interesting visual artists. In addition, we hope to learn a lot from having a close relationship with an art institution which functions very differently from ours, but which has the same high level of ambition. We work towards developing new institutional structures, and the collaboration with Art Hub Copenhagen gives us a special opportunity to see our practice from outside.”
Tove Storch
The first artist to be given the opportunity to try her hand at working with the porous glass is Danish visual artist, Tove Storch. For several years, she has created beautiful sculptures, built up from a series of artistic experiments with materials such as metal, textile, paper and plaster. Glass, as a material is a completely new acquaintance for Storch, which will now be part of her continuous explorations into the possibilities with sculpture.
For the exhibition at Glas in the autumn, Tove Storch will test the possibilities with glass as a material and how bodily experiences can be encapsulated in the spatiality and sensuality of glass.
The exhibition with Tove Storch opens on 23rd November 2024 and can be seen at Glas until 9th March 2025.
