She has found that glass is the medium which allows her to best express her productive engagement with ideas. Her inspiration, however, is inspired by a much broader interest in the arts, science and nature. She reads widely and attends assiduously to details of the natural world.

Prior to becoming an art student Hannah Gason trained as a Cartographer at RMIT University, Melbourne. Her first job, which initially brought her to ANU, was with the Cartography Unit in the ANU College l of Asia and the Pacific where she produced digital maps for the publications of researchers and students for three years.

Though Hannah loved map-making, she knew she was looking for another path – one that would allow her a freedom of creative expression. Going to art school became the logical next step. She enrolled as a student at the ANU School of Art and Design, where in 2015 she completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Glass) with first class honours, earning a University Medal and a number of prizes and residencies. In the years since Hannah has continued to develop her practice, exhibiting regularly both in solo and group exhibitions.  

‘Interval’, the title of Gason’s current exhibition at the Drill Hall Gallery, reflects her interest in the fields of time and space. “I chose the title ‘Interval’ because it defines both time and space and the period between times and the space between points,’ she says. Gason’s title could also refer to the distance between the glass object and its shadow, the range of wavelengths between colours on the spectrum, or the length of time it takes for light to travel to us from the sun.

The exhibition comprises a series of wall panels that have the effect of being highly finished. They are mesmerising. The abstract patterns play with repetition and disruption through the placement of tiles in shifting tones of yellow, red, blue and grey. They also vary in opacity and transparency. In addition, there is a group of small tower-like objects that by comparison are quite raw in their finish.

For Gason the making of the work is an intricate journey of discovery: from the recording of initial concepts through notes and sketches, to the first production of glass elements, choice of and experimentation with colour, cutting and breaking and finishing each glass element – re-configuring them over and over until the final arrangement is harnessed. It’s– an exacting process taking considerable time and great care. The work, in its disconnected state is then prepared for the firing, during which event all the individual tiles, softened by extreme heat, their edges blurred, fuse to form the single larger panel.

In Gason’s glass work, a material dependence on light is made evident. Her elegant wall compositions filter and modify available light to articulate rhythm, pattern and pulse which become duplicated, reorganised and recast by falling shadows, signalling the presence of the object while paradoxically underscoring its fleeting immateriality and reliance on light. Similarly, Gason’s small sculptural folds of cut glass achieve a wholeness only when the radiant shadows they cast come into view.

Hannah Gason’s work takes us to a quiet place where the noise of the world outside, though present, is absent. In the process of making she strives for a centredness – peaceful, yet robust. With each new group of works, she pushes further towards this goal, while recognising and accepting that the goal continues to be fluid and essentially unattainable.