Sculpture | Dhanggal | Lucy Simpson

The glass Dhanggal takes its form from the freshwater mussel shell, a large bivalve mollusc. Handmade in collaboration by artisans at Canberra Glassworks, each piece is individually cast using an 80-year-old shell collected from a parched riverbed within the Murray Darling Basin in Northwestern New South Wales. This shell was one of more than 2 million mussels that perished between 2017 - 2020 at the height of the drought. Lucy sees each individual shell as a record of time and place, a tactile vessel etched with memory. Ranging from translucent to opaque, black to white, pure to gritty, this subtle yet striking collection has been designed to convey a sense of fragility within our natural world and importance of balance and belonging.

Ranging from translucent to opaque, black to white, pure to gritty, this subtle yet striking collection has been designed to convey a sense of fragility within our natural world and the importance of balance and belonging.

Lucy Simpson is a Yuwaalaraay wirringgaa woman, of Yuwaalaraay Country in north-western NSW, and is an established contemporary artist and designer based in Sydney. Her process-led practice is inspired by Country, relationships, and notions of continuity and exchange. Lucy Simpson’s 2023 Jackson Bella Room Commission, Holding Ground, evokes the freshwater rivers and lakes of her Yuwaalaraay Country in north-west NSW and ‘speaks to a need that we all share to create time and space to connect to Country, to hold and protect, and to tune into its natural rhythms, energies and flow’.

Details:
Blown glass, sand
approx 14 x 8cm