For this May’s Design Month Graz in Austria, the 12th-century Schloss Hollenegg castle will host “Ashes & Sand,” its eighth annual exhibition curated by founder Alice Stori Liechtenstein and Rainald Franz, curator of glass and ceramics at Vienna’s MAK.
Five artists from the Schloss Hollenegg for Design program will show creations made over a month-long residency in the castle. Some found inspiration in the vast castle collection, which spans centuries. Tamara Barrage, for example, reconceptualized Chinese porcelain lights into oversized zoomorphic candle holders. Others tackled the castle itself—Antrei Hartikainen cast impressions of its architecture in glass, turned them into vases, then embedded them back into the building—or its surroundings, including sand removed from beneath the castle in creating a new rail line, which Christian & Jade crafted into a drinking set.
Some 20 more up-and-coming designers also join them, including those like Hanna-Kaisa Korolainen and Stories of Italy, who reinvent traditional glassblowing techniques, and those, like Lenn Gerlach, who explore the local legacy of the development of those techniques. Clara Schweers, Studio Groovido, and others fashion political lenses from the show’s titular media. And while accomplished glassblower Marc Barreda will produce objects on the castle grounds during the opening weekend via his traveling glass furnace, the rest of the work remains on view through May 28.
