Overview

GR'AFT draws on the ancient practice of grafting, the joining of separate living forms to create new growth, as both process and metaphor.

Developed during a 2024 residency at Canberra Glassworks, this body of work brings together glass, ceramics, and bronze through collaborations with skilled artisans, including the Canberra Glassworks team guided by Annette Blair and Spike Deane, and Nick Stanks of Carwoola Casting. The sculptures emerged through the grafting of materials, environments, technical knowledge, and collaborative processes.

The works also reconnect with the visual language that shaped Lynda Draper's ceramic practice in the 1990s: a restrained palette, surfaces recalling wax, confectionery, and icing, and recurring biomorphic and funnel-like forms that evoke growth, vitality, and continual transformation. Through these tactile, hybrid sculptures, Draper explores how collaboration, material exchange, and layered histories give rise to objects that seem to possess a life of their own.

See the Canberra Glassworks website for the full 2026 program and aligned events.

Canberra Glassworks 2026 exhibition program is supported by artsACT and Creative Australia.