Obsessed: Compelled to make

"My fascination with the process of glassblowing itself has evolved over the decades as I began to utilise it as a vehicle for making work that referenced my other obsession – my fascination with the incredible complexity of the body and its impossibility to comprehend on 
a singular level."

"When I’m off country, I’m a caretaker of another country. I’m a respectful caretaker. It’s very powerful to be able to source material from your own tribal boundaries because the most powerful thing about my work is that I’m taking back country."

“As light interacts with land and sky the two are constantly transformed, their colour, depth and luminance changing and creating endless, subtle and unique experiences as the days continue to roll on.”

"Being lost in the rhythms of making is like the in between spaces of long distance travel. It gives the mind space to dreamthink and for new ideas to percolate."

"I want to do things nobody else would be prepared to do because they involve processes that are too labour intensive or seem like crazy ideas."

"Jewellery drew me in so tight. I loved that it was highly personal but very public. That it was worn on the individual and not on a wall. That it was a potent vessel for story. I fell in love quickly and hard."

"There’s not very many jobs in which you get to fire on all aspects of what it means to be human. I get to be physically active, analytical and academic, and I get to collaborate and interact with people. I get to be a complete human being."

"Thinking is the backbone to my obsession, working through the mechanics or semantics of an idea in my head." Elliat Rich

"Working with my hands started with those camel saddles, a long time ago now, and shoemaking has been an attempt to move into a medium where there is a market for a high-end product that demands precision and skill." James B Young

"You know how bowerbirds collect blue things? [As a kid,] I wanted everything aqua. Now, working with colours in my workshop, I use the very expensive cobalt teal pigment powder, which is also quite toxic and poisonous."

"An artist’s studio is an amazing place, a laboratory where anything can happen. I think a silversmith’s workshop is the best version of that studio context, as it functions as an alchemical frame that enables a wide range of making processes to be enacted, and for the artist
 to transform materials in
exciting ways."

"Where do my ideas come from? I have been asked this question many times and every time I answer differently depending on the day. Most of the time, I get inspired while I’m working, somehow an idea just pops up: ‘Why don’t I do that? What if I do this?’.

"I am weaving animals to be stitched to my self-portrait, like they are pouring out of me. That’s how my weaving ideas come, flowing from my hands and body."

"Often my best ideas occur when I least expect it – when I let things just wash over me – a state that
 is almost a form of meditation – being open to the question “what if?”."

"Making is in my fingers and when I’m at the loom, I’m aware of the expertise and precision required to interlace warp with weft to create an envisioned structure."

Filmmaker Angus Lee Forbes was commissioned to create audio visual presentations of each of the 14 artists in Obsessed: Compelled to make – and most were filmed in the artists’ studios across Australia.

Obsessed: Compelled to make showcases the awe-inspiring creativity and innovation of the maker and at the same time focuses on the fundamental human need to make. This project has been our obsession for the past few years.

With the generous support of the Gordon Darling Foundation, ADC has created a full-length catalogue for Obsessed: Compelled to make – a made object that has many layers of making within its covers.