Rail as Vessel

BACKGROUND Rail as Vessel was exhibited in the state's principal art gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, Federation Square, for the curated exhibition Containment: the 2012 Cicely & Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award. This included works from 14 key national artists and craftspeople working across the disciplines of ceramics, glass and metal. Previous recipients of the Award are Neville Assad-Sadha (1994) for ceramics, Robert Baines (1997) for metalwork, Louise Weaver (2003) for textiles, Sally Marsland (2006) for jewellery and Simone LeAmon (2009) for seated furniture. CONTRIBUTION Rail as Vessel explored contexts of anti-expanded object practice and researched the relationship between art, craft and architecture, adding new knowledge to an understanding of the craft object beyond its traditional vessel connotation, thus finding new ways to speak of the relationship between object, space and time. Amanda Dunsmore, Curator, International Decorative Arts & Antiquities, NGV, expressed it as: "Many of the works employ a sculptural aesthetic while remaining inherently functional, yet they play with the possibilities of what might be, beyond their practical value." SIGNIFICANCE Containment: the 2012 Cicely & Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award - is one of the most prestigious offered to a contemporary practitioner in Australia, with a prize of $30,000. Four pieces by Edgoose have already been acquired by the NGV, to sit alongside works by key international artists such as Otto Kunzli, Susan Cohn and Johannes Kuhnen.