The 2023 exhibition Born From Fire: Return to the Flames brought glass, metal and wood together through the practices of Fijian artists Alice Hill and Shane Bower.
Presented in Suva, the exhibition included individual works and collaborations designed around materials transformed by heat.
Glass and metal meeting through process
Hill developed her practice as a professional glassblower at Hot Glass Fiji in Korotogo.
Bower worked across metal and copper at scales ranging from small objects to large commissioned sculpture.
The collaboration joined the fluid, translucent qualities of blown glass with the structural strength and worked surfaces of metal.
Wood added another natural material and expanded the contrast between transparency, weight and texture.
Making visible the labour behind the objects
Live glassblowing and metalworking demonstrations accompanied the exhibition.
These events gave visitors access to the physical stages through which the works were produced, including heat, timing, tool control and cooperation between makers.
The original account was framed heavily through hotel sponsorship and hospitality promotion. Removed from that commercial language, the exhibition’s artistic value lay in the meeting of two established material practices.
Hill and Bower both worked in fields requiring technical precision and an understanding of how materials behave under force and temperature.
Born From Fire used collaboration to reveal similarities between media that appear visually different.
Glass and metal both begin in rigid or raw states, become workable through heat and retain evidence of the artist’s handling after cooling. The exhibition made that shared transformation its central subject.