Tony Hanning: Into the light

As a glass artist, Tony Hanning enjoys a national and international reputation. In his seventies, his first major survey exhibition is being held at the Gippsland Art Gallery in Sale, Victoria.

Technically adventurous and not anchored in a particular narrow “signature style,” Hanning emerges from this exhibition that covers forty years of his work as primarily a storyteller—albeit he tells stories that frequently lack a linear narrative. What is apparent in this exhibition is that Hanning is very much a Gippsland product; born, raised, and still living in Gippsland.

He was born in Traralgon in 1950; started his training at the Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education; and at the age of twenty two, became the youngest director of the Latrobe Valley Arts Centre (later renamed Latrobe Regional Gallery, Morwell), a post that he held for almost a decade. In 1967, he became a shire councillor and later mayor of Latrobe City. Despite spells of living and working in America and being awarded a PhD in 2008 and a master of arts in 1998 from Monash University, plus lengthy periods of teaching, the spirit of Gippsland with its bushland, waterways, and seascapes permeates his art.

Apart from the glass objects that make up much of the exhibition, there is a substantial body of drawings, pastels, and oil paintings. Many of these celebrate the moods and seasons of the Gippsland landscape with sweeping views of Boolarra South, the Sale wetlands, a storm over Waratah Bay, the endless gloomy horizon of Townsend’s Road, the sparkling waters of Venus Bay, winter in Yinnar South, and the moody autumn skies over a shallow inlet.

There is one drawing that stands out from the rest in its imagery and to some extent provides a clue to Hanning’s art making process. Titled Childhood Memories, 2019, this large watercolour drawing presents a somewhat surreal composition where foreground floorboards seem to run into the sea and over them float drawings of clouds and seascapes, while above, like a descending vortex, is a huge pile of toys, books, hats, models, and go-karts. On the floorboards, in the centre, stands a table with a suspended ball or balloon over it, next to it a schematic open window with a flying curtain and a simple kitchen chair.

There is no simple narrative that decodes this floating imagery; there is a fragmentation as various thought adventures are brought together with memories and precisely observed details. Not infrequently, on Hanning’s extraordinary glass pieces that include vases, beer glasses, bowls, and spheres, disjointed fragments of imagery are embedded. Frequently, the works are laced with a dry humour as the artist introduces what could be termed a post-colonial critique of assumptions made in cultural imagery. Imagery is frequently appropriated from the repertoire of art history, popular culture, and advertising, where images are juxtaposed for dramatic and satirical effect.

Technically, and aesthetically, some of the most remarkable pieces at the exhibition are the cameo glass pieces. The technique is challenging and unfamiliar even to many in the art world. Hanning explains the technique: “To make a cameo piece it is necessary to blow two bubbles on two different blowpipes simultaneously. One bubble is entirely clear while the other bubble has layers of colour on the inside of the bubble. These bubbles are about the size of a bowling ball. Then when the two bubbles are the same size and the same temperature, they are stuck together, end-to-end, and the bubble with the colour is then broken off the blowpipe. With the coloured bubble now stuck to the end of the clear bubble, the glassblower gets a pair of wooden tongs (called paciofis) and puts the tongs inside the coloured bubble and turns it inside out over the top of the clear bubble.”

He continues, “This is about as difficult as rolling a condom over a cantaloupe on the end of a stick, with a pair of wooden tongs in forty degree heat. This then enables the glassblower to make a vessel which now has the colours on the outside of the piece. After the piece has cooled down overnight in an annealing oven, the piece is given to me to work on. When I receive the piece, it appears to be totally black, but in fact there are colours beneath the black waiting to be revealed. I begin by covering the entire outside of the piece with a grey air conditioning duct tape. This will serve as a ‘resist.’”

Then Hanning commences with the elaborate process of drawing on the tape with a chinagraph pencil and cutting away the tape in stages for various areas to be sandblasted, carved back and engraved to reveal clear or coloured areas of glass. Some areas are left black—the colour that once covered the entire surface. Some of the amazing cameo glass pieces in the exhibition include, FLY, 2005; IBN, 2020; the bewilderingly ambitious MEX, 2011; and SAN, 2007.

The exhibition contains a broad range of Hanning’s glass pieces from the early sandblasted Bather, 1981, that he executed with Nick Mount as part of Budgeree Glass, situated on the outskirts of Boolarra in South Gippsland, to the stunning carved glass pieces including Big Gum Bowl, 1985; Geometry, 1985; Billabong, 1986; and Dawn, 1995.

In a similar way that Hanning’s technique is multitiered, so is meaning in his imagery that frequently involves social commentary. For instance, the visually stunning triple overlay cameo vase, FEZ, 2008, contains two portrait panels, on opposite sides. One is of the iconic Gibson Girl—the image of a woman in a single-piece bathing costume that was considered risqué in the 1950s and was featured on Gibson guitars. The other is of a bare-breasted “native” woman carrying water jars, appropriated from a painting in the National Museum of Fine Arts of Havana in Cuba and which was considered acceptable due to the ethnicity of the woman.

The “fez” itself, that gave the piece its title, is also pictured on the vase and is a comment on how the red, conical, flat-crowned felt hat topped with a tassel that once designated Muslim men was usurped by Americans to designate masonic lodge members. As you peer into the vase, you notice Congo drums, postcards of African women, and the planet Saturn that have been created through the misunderstanding of another culture.

Hanning, through his wondrous glass creations, demonstrates that studio glass can be stunningly beautiful, visually captivating, and charged with social meaning. Into the light – A Survey is a memorable exhibition that delights the eye and engages the mind.

This article was originally published in issue 69 of Artist Profile.

EXHIBITION
Tony Hanning: Into the light – A survey
7 September – 24 November 2024
Gippsland Art Gallery, Victoria