Change in the weather

Gentle twisting arcs are a feature of Galia Amsel's work. Picture / Dean Purcell

With the wind whistling through the rafters of her Oratia studio on a stormy afternoon, London-born glass artist Galia Amsel is enjoying her rear-window view of rolling paddocks and long grass being blown about. It's exactly what she moved to New Zealand for - a view, and space where her two young sons could run around.

Fellow glass artist Ann Robinson recommended the area. After several months exploring the North Island, Amsel, who moved to New Zealand in November 2003 with her husband and sons, realised Robinson was right.

Amsel has an impressive CV of international exhibitions and work in public collections throughout the world, including the Victoria and Albert. But she says that moving to New Zealand will have little effect on her career.

"I suppose the markets for my work were always abroad anyway, rather than the UK. They've always been America and Europe, so it didn't really matter where I lived.

"My work is quite large and a lot of the homes are smaller there so it sort of suits Americans. They have bigger homes and more money. England is not a poor country but they seem to go for the antiques or for the things from abroad."

When Amsel first met Robinson in London she was impressed that she sells 90 per cent of her work at home in New Zealand. Since moving, Amsel has found that she, too, can have a larger home market.

"There are probably more galleries in Auckland showing glass than there are in London showing glass," she says. "I think the biggest difference between New Zealand and the UK is that New Zealanders definitely support their artists a load more than the British public supports their artists. In the UK, once you get past a certain level, you start exhibiting abroad."

Amsel started working with cast glass - a technique where glass is melted into moulds in a kiln, rather than blowing it - in the 80s when the present cast-glass movement was emerging and when pioneering artists, including Robinson, had to develop their own methods.

Robinson also completed a master's degree at the Royal College of Arts in London, where much of the work was conceptual. "It was a pretty experimental time for all cast glass, really. It was only towards the end of the 80s or early 90s that people were writing books about it.

"It's almost a healthier way to learn because you made up what you wanted the glass to do based on what your ideas were, as opposed to learning loads and loads of techniques and following what other people had done previously. I feel at an advantage from having been at that stage and learning."

Amsel's pieces have a kinetic quality with gently twisting arcs that suggest motion and draw the viewer to move around and explore the work. This can be traced back to her early training in industrial design, with her work based on mechanical or ritualistic objects and trying to catch a rhythm or motion.

This fascination for dynamism is partly because of the 13 years she lived in Hong Kong.

"There is a lot of energy being in Hong Kong. There's probably more in England now, but when I went back there it seemed a terribly slow place."

Moving to New Zealand has also affected her work and she has already added a new technique.

Some people who are doing sandblasting have enabled her to explore surfaces a lot more thoroughly.

The designs that have emerged from this exploration come straight from the bush-lined back-window environment around her, where she watches. She cites the speckled effect on a large pink piece. "That was inspired by the rain I get to watch most of the time here. I just love the way it swirls around.

"I've been more affected by the dramatic weather you get here with the pounding rain, and things I wasn't expecting to be necessarily inspired by, which I find quite exciting. Everyone else hates the weather, but it's so dramatic. I quite enjoy that kind of thing."

Exhibition

*What: Galia Amsel
*Where and when: Masterworks Gallery, 95
*Customs St West, to Feb 26