George Agius’s work is both visceral and seductive. Her blown and sculpted glass pieces, splayed like organs or candy-coloured accoutrements of the bedroom, toy with gender, power dynamics, sex, desire, and a little gore. This exhibition is a site of carnal pleasures converging.

Glass, like a body, feels fragile. Agius collapses flesh into glass, pushing the material into a medium that considers the body and its relationship to intimacy and power. Using a 1000-degree furnace, Agius transforms molten silica into unwieldy organs. Through a process of mostly gentle manipulation, the glass is blown or cut into shape – determining whether they become something like sweet meats or sweetbreads.

Agius is a glass artist based in Feilding (Aorangi) in the Manawatū. She was selected as the New Zealand Glassworks Artist-in-Residence in 2024 and was just included in the most recent Corning Museum of Glass’s ‘New Glass Review’ that compiles a list of 100 of the most timely and innovative projects in glass internationally.

Text written by Milly Mitchell-Anyon, Curator at The Dowse Museum and Art Gallery.