Name/Title
Untitled Coleman (bubble uranium tubes)Entry/Object ID
2019.23.5Description
3 loose uranium tubes; in an earlier iteration, the tubes were housed in a glass bell jar mounted on a pedestal (destroyed). A similar 4th tube (circled in red) was borrowed from Rian Jarvis for the 2019 exhibition "shiNE ON" and displayed together with MONA's 3 tubes.Collection
Brian Coleman CollectionMade/Created
Date made
circa 1970 - 1979Interpretative Labels
Label
BRIAN COLEMAN
Early work 1970s (3 pieces on east wall)
Coleman made bubbles with uranium glass and welded multi-colored stripes from other colors of glass tubing. His work in this period was dominated by ruby red, noviol gold and cobalt blue glass tubing.
Later work, 1990s to 2018 (piece on south wall)
Coleman made sweeping slow curves by slumping the neon glass tubing inside a kiln. His bubble forms became larger, elongated and twisted into bladder forms. He spliced and welded different colors of glass tubing together with absolute control and precision.
(pieces on west wall)
He began blowing different colored phosphors inside classic colored uncoated tubes for random effects inside the glass tubing and in combination with xenon or krypton gases. Coleman was a master of right-angle “German-bends” noted in the zig-zag piece. He did perfect loops and curves in 25mm large diameter classic colored glass tubing welded onto smaller diameter clear glass.