Keely Varmalis
Keely Varmalis — 'Smog II', 2025
'Smog II', a glass sculpture from Melbourne based glass artist Keely Varmalis which forms part of the Glass Futures, a collection of works produced during an intensive masterclass at r.a.g.e let by renowned glass artist Giles Bettison and artist-educator Lienors Torre.
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Keely Varmalis is a Naarm-based interdisciplinary artist working across printmaking, sculpture, and performance. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts (Honours), her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries such as West Space, Daine Singer, and the Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery, and she has performed at Station and Project8 Gallery. In 2023, she began training with r.a.g.e., drawn to the fragility and demanding nature of glass as a material.
Through sculpture and installation, Varmalis moves with the language of fluidity, as resistance to systems that seek to fix, contain, or define. Working with copper, fabric, glass, and steel, she embraces collapse not as failure, but as method. Stitching recurs as both technique and metaphor: a ritual of repair that marks rupture without erasing it. Her work holds space for impermanence, tracing how bodies and materials absorb pressure, hold memory, and insist on becoming, again and again.
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Glass Futures
September 18 – November 1
Glass Futures presents a collection of works produced during an intensive masterclass at r.a.g.e, led by renowned glass artist Giles Bettison and artist-educator Lienors Torre. This body of work showcases how participants engaged with the intricacies of pattern and form in glass, inspired by the centuries-old Venetian tradition of murrine. Working with Bullseye sheet glass rather than traditional furnace glass, participants developed a contemporary take on this technique under Bettison’s tutelage. Once vessels were formed in the hot shop, Torre introduced various coldworking processes, allowing for intricate surface refinement and the elevation of each work to a new level of clarity and expression.
At its heart, Glass Futures is a dialogue between tradition and innovation. Anchored in the lineage of Australian studio glass, this exhibition celebrates the transfer of material knowledge to a new generation of makers. The resulting works embody the rhythm of process — layered, fused, shaped and carved — revealing glass as a medium that is at once enigmatic and precise.
For participants at different stages in their careers, this masterclass was both a technical and artistic threshold: an invitation to refine skill whilst articulating an individual voice. Together, the works in Glass Futures testify to the vitality of independent glass education in Australia, offering a glimpse into the bold and evolving future of the medium.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, as well as generous support from Bullseye Glass, Craft Victoria, and r.a.g.e.
Artist List – Eva Alisic, Ruth Allen, Giles Bettison, Laura de Carteret, Nick Doran Adams, Cheryl Edwards, Juniper Maffescioni, Clare Millar, Elizabeth Parsons, Nicole Polentas, Michelle Stewart, Lienors Torre, Keely Varmalis
Read more about the exhibition here:
Material: Bullseye murrine glass, sandblasted
Dimensions: Approx. 23.5 x 8.5 x 8.5cm
Please note when purchasing, exhibition works are to be collected when exhibition closes.
Shipping costs may be estimates. Please feel free to contact shop@craft.org.au who will be available to provide an Art Courier quote or shipping costs for larger items.