Jam Manufacturing unit in Adelaide has introduced Annette Blair because the winner of the 2026 Fuse Glass Prize, Australia and New Zealand’s richest prize for glass artists. Blair acquired the $20,000 non-acquisitive award for her work Remnants of time – In idleness whereas Adelaide-based artist Isobel Waters gained the David Henshall Rising Artist Prize for Within the Absence of a Analysis.
The biennial prize, established in 2016, locations a highlight on glass as a up to date artwork type and encourages artists to push the medium in new instructions. This yr’s finalists included 12 established artists and 6 rising artists, chosen by a judging panel made up of Tami Landis of the Corning Museum of Glass, Aimee Frodsham of Canberra Glassworks, JamFactory’s Dr Lee-Anne Corridor, glass artist and 2024 winner Tom Moore, and JamFactory CEO Brian Parkes.
Blair, based mostly within the Canberra area, works from Canberra Glassworks and her studio in Burra, New South Wales. Her observe is thought for its technical precision and its deal with the emotional and materials qualities of glass, with works that discover reminiscence, place and transformation. She has additionally constructed a robust nationwide and worldwide profile as each an artist and a gaffer, making and educating glassblowing and glass portray throughout Australia and abroad.
The judges praised Blair’s work for its scale, ambition and conceptual depth, saying it attracts viewers into reflections on nostalgia, impermanence and transformation. They famous her potential to carry magnificence and decay in rigidity, describing the piece as each visually hanging and emotionally affecting.
View gallery
Waters’ profitable rising work displays a distinct however equally compelling path. Her observe attracts on her expertise in well being care, the place she explores the bodily and emotional realities of the human physique. The judges mentioned Waters’ work embraces complexity and experimentation, utilizing glass to specific rigidity, fragility and transformation in methods different supplies can not. Her win consists of $5,000 in prize cash and knowledgeable improvement residency at JamFactory valued at an extra $5,000.
