MELBOURNE.- Tolarno Galleries will present Day Before Tomorrow, a new exhibition by Nicholas Folland.

Folland is known for large installations such as Flirt, made with hundreds of cut glass and crystal pieces, and shown at the AGNSW in 2019. Significantly, Day Before Tomorrow marks Folland’s first foray into both coloured and non-crystal glassware.

The exhibition comprises five works, each named after a day of the week:

Honey Monday
Blue Tuesday
Red Wednesday
Green Thursday
Blue Friday

Accompanying them is Clear Weekend, a monumental glass triptych without colour.

Harnessing the aesthetic potential of found leadlight panels and domestic glassware, Folland has constructed a series of shelf-based and suspended works that transform the vernacular and the everyday into a rainbow of formal harmonies.

Jewel-toned compositions throw delicate hues on their immediate surroundings, gently expanding their field of activity. They also hint at the synergies between colour and music.

As Lisa Slade writes in the catalogue essay: “Improvisational, these colourful compositions … resemble musical scores in space, striking a chord with the early modernists and their association of colour with sound.”

“I’ve worked with domestic glassware forever and have tended to focus on clear crystal,” says Folland, who lives in Kilkenny in Adelaide’s inner-northwest. “But lately, I’ve found my eye drifting increasingly towards colour.”

He began collecting items of coloured glass and bringing them back to the studio, unsure at first how to proceed. “I thought I’d focus on mid-century glassware, but as I amassed more and more, I began to be attracted to imitations of mid-century designs as well, from sources such as Ikea.”

A glass jar from McDonald’s was also included, chosen for its resemblance to crystal. “I love these deceptions because they speak to authority, desire and taste,” he says. “I like the idea of having the authentic right next to an imitation of it, as they really play the same role.”

At the same time, Folland was noticing an abundance of vintage leadlight windows in secondhand shops as gentrification gathered pace in Adelaide.

“In my neighborhood, all these bluestone and sandstone houses from the 1920s through to the 1940s are full of leadlight windows, and they are now being selectively removed as people renovate or knock down and rebuild,” he says. “It’s slightly horrifying.”

“Having said that, I’m part of that gentrification because I purchased my home five years ago and, like everyone around here, started renovating,” he adds. “And as much as I’m worried from a heritage point of view, I’m also excited by the change, as new people move in and new communities form.”

Initially, Folland thought the leadlight panels and the glassware would form separate works. “But when you have things sitting around in the studio, they begin to have conversations among themselves and I saw that happening.”

“I felt like a Colour Field painter, having to make decisions based on colour relationships,” he says. “It was a new challenge.”

While collecting coloured glass for the Monday to Friday works, Folland avoided clear glass altogether. “But I was also noticing plenty of clear leadlight panels around the place and wanted to work with them as well, so it seemed logical to bring them together for Clear Weekend, which I made last.”

Folland was careful to include a variety of clear glass tones. “You put two clear glass objects next to each other, and you’ll see they’re not identical. Clear glass isn’t all the same, so it’s about drawing some variation into it. In that way, Clear Weekend has a connection to the variety in the coloured works as well.” .