Billy Crellin — 'It's the stone that pours' Sculptural Glass Vessel, 2025

In his latest sculptural works, Billy Crellin explores glass as a faux stone, reflecting on the transitory nature of material knowledge and the speculative trajectory of its future. Originally developed to mimic precious stones, glass has long disrupted how we perceive and value natural materials—a phenomenon echoed today in the rise of synthetic diamonds.

Using a furnace to recreate historical molten colour recipes, Crellin captures pure colour diffused through sculptural form. The result is a series of monolithic glass  that embody the evolving possibilities of glass as a cultural material. These works transform raw earthly commodities into consumer objects, tracing a linear anthropology that ultimately returns them to natural processes. 

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Driven by a patient devotion to material ecology, new materialism, and material afterlife, Billy Crellin’s practice occupies a new plane grounded in the histories of glassmaking, studio crafts, and industrialisation. A trained production glassblower with a degree in visual arts, he has spent over a decade working across glass centres in Europe and Australia before establishing a studio in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Crellin’s works are held in the collection of the City of Lommel, and he has undertaken residencies at the GlazenHuis in Belgium.

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Speculative Future

Vitrine

May 1 – June 14, 2025

In Werner Herzog’s film Heart of Glass (Herz aus Glas), a 19th-century autarkic community descends into madness when its central element—the local glass factory—loses the recipe for its ruby-red glass with the passing of the factory chemist. This narrative resonates with contemporary concerns about how the old is rapidly eroded by the new, creating a sense of chaos in a world unbound by enduring truths.

Set within a “Speculative Future,” Billy Crellin’s work similarly engages with this theme, with each piece raising open-ended questions about the ever-evolving material world. His use of glass—imitating the slow transformation of stone through its illusory transparency—offers a distinctly human take on natural evolution.

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Material: Hot cast iron oxide glass, sand and bentonite

Dimensions: approx. 20 x 19 cm

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