BLAST! 2010

Zest Gallery is hosting BLAST! - the Cohesion Glass Network’s annual selling exhibition, for the second year running. This exciting collaboration will showcase some of the best British contemporary glass art, featuring sculptural and wall mounted work selected from Cohesion’s talented members, both newcomers and more established artists.

This year, glass expert and collector Alan Poole is a co-curator of the exhibition. Alan is a director of North Lands Creative Glass in Lybster, Scotland, and runs Dan Klein Associates, which has been collecting and promoting British and Irish contemporary glass for three decades.

In close collaboration with Alan, we have selected 16 amazingly versatile artists whose work embodies a broad spectrum of processes and techniques. Glass is a fascinating medium for artists to explore and the results can be breathtaking. In the hands of Bruce Marks, a skilled glassblower with a keen interest in colour, molten glass becomes a solid substantial vessel. By contrast, Inge Panneels, a pate de verre expert, creates fragile floating vessels, granular and textured, from the same core substance.

A very special feature of the exhibition is a tribute to Dan Klein, the UK’s pre-eminent glass advocate, writer and collector who died last year. Adam Aaronson’s glass studio, adjacent to Zest Gallery, has made a glass bowl for each of the 16 artists to turn into a unique work of art. These will be priced at £125 each and the full proceeds of these one-off pieces will be donated to North Lands Creative Glass for Dan Klein's Memorial Fund.