NICOLE AYLIFFE

Nicole Ayliffe exhibits both nationally and internationally, including the USA, UK and Asia. Her work has been collected in Museums including The Glasmuseum; Germany, Octavia Hill’s Museum; England, The Parliament House Art Collection; Canberra and the National Glass Collection at the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery. She has also gained recognition in many art awards, including being selected as a finalist in the Ranamok Glass Prize 2005 & 2006, the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize and Young Glass International, Ebeltoft, Denmark.

Nicole’s work uses the optical qualities of glass to create a three-dimensional illusion of space within her work. The ‘Optical Landscape’ series combines both hot blown glass and photographic imagery. The black and white images reference the Australian landscape, and are highlighted by the refraction of light through the glass form. The repetition of line within the landscape led to the development of the ‘Optical Drawing’ series, where she has drawn lines onto the glass form with coloured stringers of glass. Each glass piece is created with a different shape, thickness and form, creating a variation in optical qualities.

The series ‘A moment in Time’ is at once contemporary and nostalgic. Transparency, distortion and a sense of suspension, suggest the hazy realm of memory and imagination. It is these qualities that are fused with patterns inspired by childhood recollections. The rectangular glass forms act as fragments of the past, framed within the beauty of a three dimensional space, whilst the cylindrical forms provide a blank surface which these patterns have been etched onto.