Siobhán Hapaska

Hapaska has over the past almost three decades created original and formally complex work difficult to categorize. Moving effortlessly between abstraction and figuration the viewer is ultimately left with the space her sculptures and installations leave for the imagination, allowing for a more abstract reflection. Her practice has long been known and celebrated for its diverse vocabulary of organic and synthetic materials, its complex layering of narrative and its immaculately crafted, descriptive detail. Drawing from both technology and nature, her materials charged with history and sometimes conflicting meanings.

Without directly addressing political issues Hapaska’s work oftentimes references issues of territory and cultural identity, alienation and solitude, often with an element of humour and hopefulness and never with cynicism.

Hapaska (born 1963 in Belfast, Northern Ireland) lives and works in London and Rotterdam. Recent projects include a solo-exhibition at Kunstmuseum St Gallen, Switzerland as well as a permanent installation at Chateau Lacoste, France (both 2020), solo exhibitions at John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton, UK, (2019) Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2015) and Magasin III Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm (2013-2014). Her work has also been shown in numerous group exhibitions such as, among others, Dreamers Awake, White Cube, Bermondsey, London, UK, (2017) The Hepworth Wakefield, UK, (2017), Forecast of the Next Century, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University (2017), the Azerbaijan Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale, Astralis at Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris (2014).

In 1997 Hapaska participated in Documenta X and in 2001 she represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale.