Lyndall Phelps: Science of Common Life

In this exhibition, the National Art Glass Gallery will become a unique laboratory, a place of surprising experimentation and transformation. Lyndall Phelps will create a site-specific installation that merges her research into the National Art Glass Collection and glass from the scientific world, with the many ways women incorporate glass into craft activities, now and in the past.

Expect the unexpected as test tubes, petri dishes, microscope slides and watch glasses playfully interact with netting, crochet and knitting embellished with beads and sequins. Audiences will be surprised and delighted, curious and intrigued.

The investigation of collections, both historical and contemporary, is central to Lyndall Phelps’ art practice. Within this context, Phelps regularly seeks out the scientific and the domestic, especially women’s craft. In her hands, these subjects, which at first might seem incongruous bedfellows, are combined in narrative-driven installations of exquisitely hand-crafted objects.

Glass is a recurring material within Phelps’ work, especially scientific glass, of which she is an avid collector. She is also drawn to glass’s transparent and light reflective qualities and the richness of colour it affords. For Science of Common Life, the precision and skill required to manufacture scientific glass will be echoed in Phelps' meticulously constructed, labour-intensive objects.