First Breath, Last Breath
First Breath, Last Breath by Gabriella Bisetto, Grace Cochrane, Stephen Atkinson and Shawn Hendry, and co-published by JamFactory and Wakefield Press.
Accompanying the First Breath, Last Breath, Everything In Between exhibition, this publication highlights Bisetto’s practice and career. Featuring essays by Grace Cochrane, Stephen Atkinson and Shaw Hendry, the publication is a collaboration between JamFactory, University of South Australia and Wakefield Press.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Gabriella Bisetto is a Senior Lecturer at UniSA Creative, University of South Australia, and a practising glass artist. Drawing on her abiding interest in the body as a source of conflicted narratives, Gabriella’s work measures, translates and interprets the mechanisms, forms and ideologies of the human body and its connection to the world around us through blown glass, hot sculpting and team projects.
As an artist, Gabriella was an invited speaker at the multi-disciplinary conference Take a Deep Breath at Tate Modern, London, in 2007; she received the Australia Council Rome Residency to explore the nexus between science, religion and art in 2009, and in 2016 she was awarded the nationally competitive Tom Malone Prize for her glasswork becoming.
As a lecturer, Gabriella’s pedagogical innovation and commitment to teaching was recognised in 2017 with an Australian University National Teaching Award.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
South Australian glass artist Gabriella Bisetto has always had an abiding interest in the inconceivable complexities of the human body. Growing up on a farm where the circle of life and death played out naturally, Bisetto developed an inordinate appreciation for the physicality and vigour of ‘being’ that has remained with her throughout her life. This interest has been underpinned by a fascination with the science and biology that denotes how bodies work. Much of Bisetto’s past work has been motivated by a desire to translate the outcomes of this science into tangible, visual outcomes that become comprehensible through art.
Over the past few years, Bisetto has become increasingly interested in the changing phases of our bodies as our cells change tempo and production – changes that are evident through the surface of our skins and reflections. This self-awareness has predicated the development of the works featured in Bisetto’s solo exhibition first breath, last breath, everything in between. Drawing from the ancient Roman adoption of the term ‘memento mori’ (‘remember that you must die’), the works in this exhibition reference and acknowledge the changing boundaries of our bodies as we enter new phases of our lives.
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