The meandering line in April Glaser-Hinder’s ‘One does nothing alone’
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‘One does nothing alone’ showcases the formalist sculptures of April Glaser-Hinder in a close collaboration between Glaser-Hinder and Wagga Wagga Art Gallery Curator Andrew Halyday, who have known one another for more than 20 years. Highlighting key moments in the artist’s five-decade career in Australia and Europe, the show encourages us to contemplate her meditative harmonisations of space, line and curve as she intuitively explores tangents to their fullest capacity.
Glaser-Hinder’s sculptures evoke the dualities and rhythmic patterns found in nature, synthesised to their simplest form. Her most recent sculpture, The Wave, when Water touches Sky (2019), is reminiscent of barrelling waves or sea spray as it circumvents into the air. The cyclical energy speaks to the nearby photographic work Movement of Water, Isar River, Munich, (c. 1990), which captures the intense flow of the Isar as the current forces glistening water to twist and unfurl into crested waves.
Her steel band series investigates density, dimensionality and the balancing of opposing forces. In Belt IV (1979), there is a push and pull motion that is elicited from diaphanous perforated steel mesh as it curves behind and the triangle of shiny polished metal as it angles forwards. A line of white light is refracted across the plinth, extending its form in a play of light and shadow.
Although sculpture is the medium through which Glaser-Hinder identifies herself as an artist, the expanse of her discerning eye is all-encompassing, including videography, photography, painting and poetry. Her film Ice and Water (c. 1995–99) provides a glimpse into the way the artist views the world as it documents rushing water pushing against and penetrating melting sheets of ice. She captures the moment that frozen German rivers begin to thaw with the coming of spring.
The niece of Frank and Margel Hinder, Glaser-Hinder (born 1928) began her studies at East Sydney Technical College (now the National Art School) as a mature-age student in her forties before taking courses in panel beating and spray painting at night school in Ultimo, where she was the first female artist in the workshop. Her earliest sculpture, Yellow (1970), portrays the deft weightlessness that defines her abstract geometric constructions. Affectionately known by the artist as ‘Little Yellow’, it is exhibited in Wagga Wagga alongside her steel ribbon series. In these works, such as Slide Over (1975) and Open Ended (1976), the artist explores the illusory space held underneath the meandering line. Inspired by the flow of colour in her experimental drip paintings, the tapered steel floats with a fluidity defying the rigidity of the material.
‘One does nothing alone’ presents the artist’s oeuvre as a series of intimate vignettes, contemplating her works of art as little worlds within worlds, but also allowing the viewer to follow the line to see the bigger picture.
Rebecca Blake, Wagga Wagga
‘April Glaser-Hinder: One does nothing alone’ is on display at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery until 8 May 2022.
