Originally from France, Desgenétez has worked, taught and exhibited in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including the “Prix d’Honneur de la Fondation de France” (Paris, France), the Saxe Award from Pilchuck Glass School in 1997 and 2004 (Stanwood, USA), the “Prix de la Vocation” from the Fondation Marcel Bleustein Blanchet (Paris, France), grants from Arts ACT and the Australia Council for the Arts, and residencies from Northlands Creative Glass (Lybster, UK), Pittsburgh Glass Center (Pittsburgh, USA) and the Tacoma Museum of Glass (Tacoma, USA). She has been teaching at the Glass Workshop of the Australian National University in Canberra since 2005.

When I consider my relationship to the medium of glass, specifically blown glass, I am strongly aware of my physical connection to my work. At once physical and mental, glass blowing requires a commitment to the present, a keen awareness of the body’s boundaries and abilities and of the specific needs of the molten glass. Forming, or transforming, in response to the body, the material is shaped by touch, with breath, answering every move, in a sequence that cannot be interrupted or postponed. Objects made of hand-blown glass embody the process through which they are made. This allows for an inherent connection between the glass blower and the blown object, but also between the object, the place in which it is made, and the maker.

Nadège Desgenétez’s work investigates ideas of connection to place. It is informed by her experience as a migrant and a maker, and mines references to the body, familiar landscapes and the process of glass blowing. In her most recent series, Desgenétez seeks to express the body’s presence and its interrelation with place by harnessing the ways the material interacts with light, colour and space through form, surface and reflection.

Nadège’s studio will be open as part of ANCA Dickson open studios.