Hapaska’s a wolf, an olive tree and circumstance, is a large-scale work where an uprooted olive tree is suspended, by means of military ratchet straps, to a complex structure made of fur covered aluminium tubing and forged scaffold fittings. A small motor creates movement and the work trembles in unsettling ways. The unspoken trauma of the uprooted tree and the seemingly logical structure of horizontal and vertical rods make the work oscillate between the animate and the inanimate to create a third, mutant, form, one that engages all senses and expands our notion of sculpture.

Hapaska has over the past almost three decades created original and formally complex work. 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.

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).