Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are advised that the following article references a deceased person.
Twenty years is a long time for a commercial gallery to survive – let alone thrive. Opening this past week, Sabbia Gallery’s anniversary exhibition, twenty, is testament to a strong vision and the dedication of its founder Anna Grigson.
With over 100 pieces by 68 artists on show, and moving across the mediums of glass, ceramics and fibre, it was a challenging brief to present this exhibition. Added that the gallery space is not overly large, and is split across three levels, this show could have been disastrously suffocating and blinding.
Pleasingly, however, the Sabbia team have pulled it off.
Walking into the entrance gallery, visitors are faced with a pair of works on the back wall by the late glass artist, Klaus Moje. And, with a folded glass wall piece by Kirstie Rae and a vibrant pot by First Nations award-winning artist Alfred Lowe (who were both successfully presented at the recent Melbourne Art Fair), viewers immediately gauge that stretch across time of supporting artists’ practice.
Just as the mediums are disparate, so are the working styles of artists in this exhibition. They are drawn both from the Gallery’s current stable of representation, and those it has worked with in the past. Each has shaped a moment in the craft landscape and, while most of the work in the exhibition is new to celebrate this moment (hence the exhibition is not a chronological view of the past 20 years), the narrative here is one of an enduring and strong creative expression and market.
It has to be said that craft has gone in and out of fashion over the years, when we think of the art market, but almost in line with the Gallery’s trajectory has been a slow incremental resurgence of individual mediums – first fibre, then ceramics and more recently a bubbling up of glass again.
That positive energy is the overwhelming feeling offered up by this exhibition – a kind of fresh hope and a celebration of hand and beauty. It is interesting that in the same week that Sabbia Gallery celebrated its 20th anniversary, so did another Sydney gallery Sullivan + Strumpf – demonstrating to this writer that craft is on equal footing as a practice of our times.
The highlights of this exhibition are in its pairings, which really speak to living with objects. Among them is a cluster of pots by Pippin Drysdale alongside a glass piece by Selinda Davidson (Ninuku Arts) sitting central to the upstairs space. Or consider the grouping of a dry glaze vessel by Simone Fraser sitting alongside a work by glass artist Jenni Kemarre Martiniello OAM and a high-fired traditional iron clay work by Janet DeBoos, all off-set by a punchy pate de verre wall panel by Emma Varga.
In the small upper gallery, probably the least cohesive grouping across the exhibition, are the works of Hannah Gason with a LED piece, a new work by glass artist Lisa Cahill expanding her kiln-formed floating wall tiles, high-fired glazed pots by Ted Secombe and stunning stoneware pots with sgraffito by Elizabeth Dunn.
In the lower gallery, the translucency and colour of glass is beautifully captured in standout pieces by Kevin Gordon and Matthew Curtis – both technically resolved and a delight to encounter with their light and shadows.
Brenden Scott French has delivered a fabulous new pair of kiln-formed glass works, which have an ethereal use of colour, while in contrast the pop and play of colour is delivered by Susie Choy with her porcelain installation and Scott Chaseling’s funky glass pot, both pushing against the traditions of their mediums.
Also pushing perceptions of the medium of glass is Liam Fleming, who has presented a new oversized work, off the back of Sabbia’s sell-out booth of his work at Sydney Contemporary.
There are also stunning examples of masters in their field – Greg Daly known for his incredible lustre glazes, and a stunning pot by the late Ernabella potter Kunmanara Carroll, with its wonder sgraffito.
And, of course, there are the artists who showed in Sabbia’s first exhibition in its Surry Hills space in the exhibition The Next Chapter – Cobi Cockburn, Mel Douglas, Jeffery Mincham AM and Nick Mount – testament to that long relationship and the sustained strength of their work.
Read: Celebrating anniversaries in 2025: the first wave of announcements
Opening in 2019, the Elizabeth Street, Redfern space is Sabbia’s third venue over its 20-year history. Like its former Paddington space, it is a more domestic scale than your lauded ‘white cube’ environment, which speaks to a deep understanding of its market.
This is a great exhibition for anyone interested in contemporary craft and to gauge a pulse on the artists who are defining these practices today.
The exhibition has been marked with the publication, Sabbia at 20: the next chapter, and a wide range of public programs in partnerships with Australia’s leading art schools, and premier art and design venues. It is definitely worth checking out.
twenty
Sabbia Gallery, 609 Elizabeth Street, Redfern, NSW
8-29 March 2025
