Luna Ryan and Surya Bajracharya

NOW SHOWING IN THE BUREAU WINDOW GALLERY

Luna Ryan
Medicine and Poison (same look double the dose) 2023
Handblown glass and kiln cast Blackwood Crystal
Gaffer Annette Blair. Fabricated at Canberra Glassworks
47 x 80 x 70 cm variable
Large bottle with pipette dropper $2500 (two available)
Small bottle with pipette dropper $2300
Single dropper $700

Surya Bajracharya
Mild Poison 2025
Lithograph. Printed at Megalo.
76 x 56 cm
$750 (unframed)

The late Klaus Moje observed that Luna Ryan’s glass works can be playful and humorous while carrying serious commentary. Here Luna’s enlarged blown and cast glass medicine and poison bottles play with the appeal of oversized novelties while offering a pointed commentary on “big pharma”.

These works were conceived in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and its public responses: rapid mandates, the intrusion into private life, and the expansion of institutional power. Against this backdrop, the bottles and droppers evoke a nostalgia for the apothecary and its traditional tinctures and treatments, standing in contrast to the vast logistics, industrial scale, and waste of contemporary medicine.

The works were made at Canberra Glassworks in collaboration with gaffer Annette Blair, renowned for her technical mastery and her long history of working with leading artists.

Accompanying Luna’s glass works is Surya Bajracharya’s lithograph Mild Poison, drawn and printed at Megalo. Comparable in scale and subject, and sharing a close attention to materiality and process, Bajracharya’s work complements Ryan’s bottles both visually and conceptually.

Bajracharya works in the tradition of memento mori. These works remind us that we will die, and that before then we are likely to seek treatment, relief, or solace. We look for a salve, a mild poison, something to ease us into the evening or draw the curtain on the day. Perhaps a drop of medicine will prolong life, perhaps the whole bottle will hold grief at bay. Blue for poison, brown for medicine and for wine and whiskey.

There is no such thing as a “mild poison.” Hard liquor, perhaps. The phrase is a deliberate invention, a provocation that plays with the idea that what does not kill you may lift your mood, dull your memory, or grant temporary reprieve.

These are imaginary bottles. They may be filled with ghosts, vapours, memories. They are also empty, waiting to be filled with your own troubles or cures, healing tinctures or intoxicating fluids. Or you may simply stand back and admire the skill, endurance, and resolve required to persist with an idea until it is fully realised in material form.

Through assured glass forms and a confident rendering of light on glass, these works function as both objects of beauty and carriers of meaning. They would complement any collection.