MAUREEN CAHILL

Willy-Willy, 1992.
Architectural drawing of Willy-Willy.
Suspended Glass Installation,
House of Representatives,
Advisors Waiting Area,
Parliament House 3 floors high.

How I use light as the medium and glass as the vehicle is important to me in my work. On-going large-scale architectural works use transmitted light as a focal point through various aspects of visual disorder. The ambiguity of spatial meaning is further explored by the arrangement of light sources and placement of the glass elements, which once again, act as lenses which alter the formal state of being through transmitted, evolving images.

This rationale is particularly obvious in a work produced in 2005 for ‘Material Instinct’ at Manly Art Gallery. ‘Three Bags Full’ relies upon strong architectural lights to focus on the transmitted image created on the floor by the suspended filament bags which hold lamp worked elements representing water, bread, health and wealth. This work is a social commentary on what is the ideal and the actual reality of the idealist saying or intention ‘No man will experience poverty…’

Keith Cummings was pivotal in my role as an artist working in glass when I studied at Stourbridge between 1974 until 1977. Upon my return, I set up the first glass course in Australia at Sydney College of the Arts in 1978, which later became a Faculty of the University of Sydney. In 1982, I set up the internationally recognised Glass Artists’ Gallery with and for some of my first graduates.

Noris Ioannou writes in his Australia Studio Glass, The Movement, It’s Makers and Their Art. Craftsman House and G&B Arts International, 1995, pp. 151 – 153:
‘One of the pioneers of the glass movement in Australia, as a practitioner and educator, Cahill’s work, in the past two decades, has changed dramatically from small intimate hand-held mosaic glass blocks to large scale public architectural glass installation spanning up to 35 metres. Although she has exhibited smaller-scale public glasswork, she is best known for her permanent installations in public spaces...’

The plinth-determining scale of the work as determined by the gallery setting, led Cahill to realise that she needed to move away from this site and into the public, architectural, arena. The latter was a considerably more challenging environment, forcing an extension of her interpretation of the medium, as well as a re-evaluation of scale, purpose and concept.

Willy-Willy, for example, is installed in Parliament House, Canberra, a space where the suspended glass forms as lenses, depending upon the changes in light during the day, and producing a play of changing shadows. Willy-Willy; An Aboriginal name for a sudden spiralling wind storm or whirlwind, evokes the energy of wind through the interplay of light and shape. This and other large suspended glass architectural installations are distinct from Cahill’s earlier installations which were smaller, and hence displayed in designated gallery spaces. The present works are integral parts of the architecture, considered in collaboration with the architect from an early development of planning’.

Biography pdf

Maureen Cahill