Tom Moore

May 02 2016 , by Penelope Benton

Born in Canberra and currently based in Adelaide, Tom Moore creates fantastical glass sculptures that are unconventional, compelling and technically rigorous.

Born in Canberra and currently based in Adelaide, Tom Moore creates fantastical glass sculptures that are unconventional, compelling and technically rigorous. He places his hybrid creatures in delightful mixed-media landscapes, offering up an alternative world where the mundane becomes extraordinary, absurdity and abundance are celebrated, and more is in fact more. Yet a steadfast seriousness underpins Moore’s practice that foreshadows ongoing environmental challenges and poses the possibility of enticing alternate paradigms.

Moore's relationship with hot glass originated within the ANU undergraduate glass program in the early 1990’s. This course was particularly beneficial as he assimilated Venetian glass blowing techniques, which he chose to apply to idiosyncratic imagery.

Moore also trained in glass blowing in Japan, as a recipient of The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Japan/South Australia Award and is regularly invited to lecture internationally. As production manager at JamFactory from 1999 to 2014, he made many products and commissions, training graduates in disciplined production of design and exhibition work.

Moore's work is represented in major institutional collections including the Museum of American Glass, New Jersey, USA; the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Powerhouse Museum. His glass sculptures have been exhibited at public galleries throughout Australia and overseas, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. In 2009 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Television profiled his practice in a documentary ‘Glassorama'.

Moore’s work has recently been curated into the 2016 Adelaide Biennial, and Lurid Beauty: Australian Surrealism at the National Gallery of Victoria. Moore has won multiple awards including the City of Hobart Art Prize (Glass) in 2014; and in 2013, the Art Gallery of Western Australia´s prestigious Tom Malone Prize for Glass, and the Ranamok Glass Prize.

While his work has been featured in high-profile exhibitions of contemporary art it also remains embedded within a lineage of traditional craft. Moore aims to produce exhibitions that are challenging in content and form while offering the audience an inspiring experience.

Moore is currently a PhD candidate at UniSA undertaking practical investigations of glass and mixed-media, focusing on hybrid lifeforms and the anthropocene.

Tom chats to NAVA about the freedom, but also, responsibility and commitment that being an artist brings.

Photo: Grant Hancock. Image originally produced for Gallery Nov/Dec 2015, The National Gallery of Victoria.