Both graduates of the RCA, Oliver and Hawes began their collaboration in 2016 by initially exploring the relationships between their distinct practices in glass and metalwork.
Conversation is key to the process, a gesture from Oliver, created in metal, encounters Hawes ‘glass’ response. The heat of the embrace moulds and quickly cools the glass as it adjusts itself and settles into place. A harmony and balance is immediately established between strength and fragility, visual poetics arising from the movement from one surface to another, as the two materials interact.
These sculptures are not solely about the end art work but the exploration and journey to bring them to fruition.