Canberra Glassworks 2026 Established Artist in Residence

Announced as Canberra Glassworks 2026 Established Artist in Residence recipient Billy Crellin will undertake a six-week residency from March untilMay 2026.

Following Billy Crellin's exhibition Speculative Future (Craft Victoria, May 2025), his succesful application to the established AIR program aims to scale those glass art works to a more ambitious size. Drawing on historic monumental cast works, Billy will explore how colour in larger forms reveals gradients and transitions. Knapping techniques will be used both as a surface language and to conceal joins in component-based constructions. Having established these processes at Studio Dokola on a small scale, these will facilitate the research undertaken during the residency.

The Canberra Glassworks is the ideal location to technically develop these works further, with access to  mould-making room, hotshop, colour pot furnace, and large kiln facilities in the vicinity of the hotshop. Similarly, part of the residency will focus on research using recycled glass donated from Keep Cup's second rate production. Storage of the glass and a high temperature kiln to enable furnace style melting will aid troubleshooting the difficult process of glass compatability for ongoing use of this glass at Studio Dokola, diverting around 1 tonne of material a year from waste. Also, importantly, the Canberra Glassworks as a community offers an opportunity to engage with professionals and share in depth knowledge on crafting the material glass.

In the lead up to the residency Billy has followed methods outlined by Heike Brachlow to test colour melts in crucibles and build a swatch database and refined colour depth.

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