FUSE Glass Prize Winners Announced 2026

JamFactory is thrilled to announce that the winner of the 2026 FUSE Glass Prize is Canberra-based glass artist Annette Blair.

This biennial non-acquisitive prize for Australian and New Zealand glass artists is Australasia’s richest prize for glass. It provides a platform for artists to push themselves and their work to new limits and focuses public attention on the importance of glass as a medium for contemporary artistic expression.

The David Henshall Emerging Artist Prize, providing $5,000 cash and a professional development residency at JamFactory, was awarded to Isobel Waters.

Annette Blair
2026 FUSE Glass Prize Winner

‘Remnants of time – In idleness continues my reflection on the quiet life of objects and the human rhythms they absorb. I am drawn to forms that feel familiar and unassuming; vessels that might once have been useful, handled daily, then gradually set aside. In their idleness, they begin to speak differently. They hold not only traces of touch, but also absence, pause, and the slow movement of time.

This work considers what lingers when function falls away. I am interested in the space between care and neglect, preservation and decay, where objects exist in quiet suspension and memory rests within memory.

Surface becomes a language of accumulation. Through layers of enamel and the gradual oxidisation of embedded metal, I allow time to remain an active collaborator. Rust blooms slowly and unpredictably, extending the work beyond the immediacy of making. Scratches, abrasions, and softened edges evoke the tender erosion of use, marks that are not damage, but evidence of presence.

Glass allows me to explore the intersection between fragility and permanence. Each element is the result of thoughtful engagement with heat, time, and material knowledge, an exploration of both process and poetics. In this work, the vessel becomes a quiet archive, embodying time as something intimate, incremental, and deeply human.’

Annette Blair is a glassmaker based in the Canberra region. She completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) at the Australian National University School of Art in 2004, before relocating to Adelaide to undertake the JamFactory Associate Program in the Glass Studio. She returned to Canberra in 2008, where she continues to grow her diverse practice in both her own studio and at Canberra Glassworks. 

Blair has dedicated her practice to refining technical processes to create works that celebrate the beauty and movement of glass as a material, while exploring the connections we have to people, objects, and place. Blair’s work has been widely recognised, including as a finalist in the Ranamok Glass Prize, the Tom Malone Prize, The Still: National Still Life Prize, and the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize. In 2022, she was awarded the Vicki Torr International Year of Glass Prize. Her work is held in both private and public collections. Most recently Blair completed a commission for Canberra Glassworks at the Australian War Memorial.
 

Remnants of time - In idleness, 2026
Blown, cold worked, enamelled and rusted glass
460 x 750 x 500mm
Photo: Adam McGrath

Isobel Waters
2026 David Henshall Emerging Artist Prize Winner

‘I have been searching - trying to understand what is happening to my body. In the absence of a diagnosis, I turned to glass making as a way of finding meaning - an attempt to ease the medical uncertainty I faced. Small moments of clarity have revealed themselves to me, but much remains unclear. So, for now I will continue to create, trying to make sense of it all.’

Isobel Waters is a visual artist working on Kaurna Country in Adelaide, South Australia. Her practice is informed by her experience as a health care worker, where she engages with the physical and emotional complexities of the human body. This clinical background continues to shape Waters’ approach to material and form, driving a practice that interrogates personal and socio-political dimensions of health, care, and embodiment. 

Working across glass blowing, kiln forming, flameworking, cold working, and assemblage, Waters’ aims to create emotive pieces that explore the fragility, strength, and adaptability of the body. Varying from intimate compositions to large scale installations, Waters’ work often invites interactive or immersive viewing experiences, encouraging audiences to reflect on their own physicality, gender, the broader systems that govern healthcare, and the human condition. Through layered processes and tactile surfaces, Waters aims to evoke the rawness of bodily experience—scars, tension, healing, and resilience. Her work exists in a space between art and anatomy, where glass becomes a medium for empathy, critique, and transformation.

In the Absence of a Diagnosis, 2025
Kiln form, hot sculpted, blown and cold worked glass
300 x 3450 x 500mm
Photo: James Field