Siobhán Hapaska solos at Camden Arts Centre

Friday, 07 September 2007 02:33

LONDON - Siobhán Hapaska shows new work at Camden Arts Centre for her first solo exhibition in the UK since her acclaimed show at the ICA in 1995. Hapaska’s colourful, grand-scale, installation-like sculptures combine both natural and manufactured materials. She is interested in the interplay of rough and smooth; conflict and transformation; and in the throwing up of unexpected relationships between objects and ideas. On exhibition 28 September – 25 November 2007.

The exhibition will include a specially-commissioned outdoor sculpture created during a residency at Camden Arts Centre. Hapaska’s sculptures take on diverse forms; using extraordinary objects from palm trees to buffalo skulls, goat skins to old socks, she reflects on the fundamentals of life, unearthing the unsaid and the troubling.

"I think some people get very uneasy when they can't find immediate, concrete explanations. I like ideas that are adrift. When things are not absolutes they become more interesting, because it throws the responsibility back on you, to understand what you might be." Siobhán Hapaska.

Hapaska’s sculptures of the mid 1990s often had highly finished metallic or pearlescent fibreglass surfaces. Her new works result from reflections on how things have changed since. Their scale is larger than human, for example Speaker (2006) which takes the form of an ape with a painted form stuffed into its mouth. Themes of fertility and potential are evoked in Dry Spring (2007) which incorporates copper pipe with flowers sprouting from the surface.

Siobhán Hapaska, b. 1963, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Hapaska's first major solo exhibition was at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London in 1995. She has had solo exhibitions in recent years at the Kerlin Gallery Dublin (2001 and 2003); Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2002 and 2007). She has participated in group exhibitions including Printemps de Septembre (2005), Extreme Abstraction at Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo (2005), a three-person exhibition with Charles Long and Ernesto Neto at Magasin 3, Stockholm (2003) and Artifice at the Deste Foundation, Athens and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki (2000). In 1997 she took part in Documenta X. She won the 1998 Irish Museum of Modern Art / Glen Dimplex Artists Award, represented Ireland at the 2001 Venice Biennale, and won the Paul Hamlyn award in 2003. Siobhán Hapaska exhibited at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York in January and February 2007.

Whilst Hapaska employs materials which acknowledge politics, technology, speed, travel and nature, we are encouraged to open our minds to the space her sculptures leave for our imaginations to take hold.

Visit Camden Arts Centre, Arkwright Road, London NW3 6DG - T: +44 (0)20 7472 5500 : www.camdenartscentre.org