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Ossify - A commission by Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens

Commissioned by Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens for the permanent collection, Sarmiento was asked to make a response to the Museum’s ethnography stores, which hold artefacts donated by well-known Sunderland resident Edward Backhouse. Inspired by the local, recent history of the collection, the artwork exposes a unique perspective of the ‘ethnic context’ of Sunderland: through the study of these foreign objects, many of which are seldom displayed to the public. Ossify (a replica of a Maori paddle) and Comb were made in printed and fused glass. When carved into their final shape, embedded images and text provide a view to the history and context of the object, creating a local link to the foreign object. The processes of printing, fusing, and grinding comprise an innovative process: the carvable graphic image in glass.

The body of artwork debuted in 2009 at Sunderland Museum in ‘Collected Fragments’, an Arts Council-funded group exhibition of international artists working with taxonomy and collection, and included an artist’s talk about the work.

Ossify (printed, fused and carved glass, 105x10x3cm) was shown at the British Glass Biennale, 2010 and awarded the ‘Runner up’ prize for the Glass Sellers Art and Craft Award. The companion piece Comb (printed, fused, water-jet cut and carved glass, 15x8x1cm) was included in New Glass Review 32 (2011), exhibited at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, and has been nominated for the International Glass Prize at Glazenhuis, Lommel, Belgium, 2012.

The project has been further disseminated through a paper ‘Ode On A Maori Paddle: Ethno/Graphic Glass Art Practice’ presented at the Museum Ethnographers’ Group Conference, Museum of English Rural Life, 2010, and published in Journal of Museum Ethnography 24 (2011).