Revisiting Elliot Walker’s Corning Residency, as Blown Away Season 4 Heats Up

Blown Away’s Season 4 ignites the fires of competition once again, showcasing the magic of glass and the talent and skill of the glassblowers taming it. Where are you on your Blown Away 4 Binge-watch? Let us know in the comments!

As the competition heats up, all the contestants have their eyes on that prize package, including a coveted residency at The Corning Museum of Glass, where they can develop new works in front of an audience of enamoured glassies.

For this online feature, we are revisiting Elliot Walker’s residency at The Corning Museum of Glass. Chris Rochelle, Helen Tegeler, and George Kennard from the Corning hot glass team and Glass artist and Blowfish Glass founder Bethany Wood assisted Elliot during his prize residency. This years prize package includes the same coveted residency, plus the opportunity of all-expenses-paid residency in Venice, Italy with glass legend Adriano Berengo.

While at Corning, Elliot’s ‘Spilt Milk‘ was on display, a new iteration launching soon as part of our BA4 celebration release.

During his residency at The Corning Museum of Glass in 2022, Walker embarked on a new period of sculpture, creating four new daring works in glass, which interrogate the nature and evolution of work, its many forms and complexities on our minds and bodies – even down to the food we consume.

Acting as an umbrella piece for this, ‘Unbroken back‘ interrogates how our bodies pay the price for the vicious cycle of labour, which is then inherited by future generations and thus intensified. The unbroken nature of the spine is a stark symbol of how our bodies have become transubstantiated as part of the unbreakable labour machine. Hot Assembled across two days, this was a real tour de force for Elliot and the team. You can view the entire making process on the Corning Museum YouTube Channel.

I wanted to focus on the idea of work and labour—human labour, wage labour—and the psychological and physical effects that has on us as a species

Elliot Walker

Walker further explored the Domestication of the mind through the animalisation of domestic objects in ‘Plunger/Antler’, which explores how we as a society have moved on from our Hunter-Gatherer mindset. Another work (not pictured) delved into the contrast between Neolithic artifacts and their modern counterparts. Combining a mop head with a spear shaft, Walker juxtaposed the tools of daily life with a weapon – a stark commentary on the duality of human advancement. This fusion of form highlighted the negative aspects that have emerged alongside the progress of civilisation. 

Marking a new departure in his work, ‘Sheeple‘ was Walker’s surreal interpretation of the slang word for someone who is easily led. Walker explored this as he believes we are ‘all part of the flock in one way or another’.

Arguably the most taxing amongst his Corning residency pieces, ‘Wheatsheaf‘ is an irreverent look at our culture of excess and how we interfere with nature through engineered crop breeding. The way humans have over-engineered staple crops such as corn is conveyed by the absurd enlargement of the work –reflecting the engorgement of monocultures. Wheatsheaf made the perilous journey from America to our Gallery in Stourbridge, where it stands pride of place!

Winning Blown Away Season 2 propelled Elliot onto the global stage, leaving a lasting impact on my work and how he approaches it. The experience of constantly generating and executing new ideas under immense pressure within a short time frame (seven weeks with 10 different pieces) was unlike anything else. That forced creativity, combined with the need to excel, has fundamentally changed the way Elliot thinks. Many of the concepts he explored on the show continue to inspire his work even now. This current season of Blown Away promises even more captivating challenges and awe-inspiring glass creations.

Need more for your Blown Away Fix? Check out our complete Blown Away Collection from other contestants’ and Elliot’s latest releases.

Written by 

Leanne O’Connor

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