Tidal Reliquary

This installation continues my ongoing exploration of glass as a vessel for holding and preserving memories.

Five decorative lampworked test tubes stand upright, each containing glass seaweeds formed in the flame and finished with soft lustres that shift in the light.

The proportions are deliberate. These works lean toward reliquary rather than specimen display. They reference Victorian traditions of collecting and preserving, where curiosity, reverence and possession often sat side by side. The vertical glass tubes echo laboratory forms, yet what they contain is not scientific sample but a handmade response to the sea.

The seaweeds are crafted individually on the blowtorch, shaped through heat and gravity. At the mouth of each tube, coloured glass implosions bloom like jellyfish or microscopic marine life, recalling both underwater ecosystems and the historic glass sea creatures made by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka for Harvard in the nineteenth century. Those works translated fragile marine bodies into glass so they could be studied and preserved. My pieces return that impulse to a more intimate scale.

As with much of my practice, the work sits between jewellery and sculpture, between adornment and archive. It asks what we choose to keep, what we attempt to preserve, and how glass can hold both memory and imagination within its walls.

I'm excited to let you know that Tidal Reliquary has been selected for inclusion in the 2026 Perpetual Guardian Small Sculpture Prize and exhibition.

The exhibition opens on Friday 27 March at the Waiheke Art Gallery and runs through to  Sunday, 10 May 2026.