Internationally celebrated Canberra-based glass maker Kirstie Rea has been announced as the 2020 DESIGN Canberra designer-in-residence. Rea was commissioned to create a new work that responds to the festival’s 2020 theme of care. The glass sculpture will be exhibited during the annual three-week event, presented across the nation’s capital from 9 until 29 November, celebrating Canberra as a global city of design and a living design laboratory.

Composed of her signature glass blankets, balanced in a threshold, Rea’s new work, With care, is a work relevant to this time. Kirstie Rea explained, “The form of the blanket is used as a generic symbol for comfort and care, but the glass ‘blanket’ has an obvious fragility attached to it. The doorway structure represents the inside and outside and the comings and goings of our lives over the threshold. The stack of ‘blankets’ symbolising care whether coming or going.”

“Glass, the material at the heart and core of my studio practice calls for care. Care not only in handling the material but embedded in an understanding of the material, the glass processes attached to explorations and to mastering the skills needed to work with it. The care we embed within the making reflects the care that those who taught us put into the sharing and passing on of skills, processes and knowledge and love for materials and making” said Rea.

Image: KirstieRea, With care, 2020. Image LeanTimms