Harriet Hawksworth and Jess Nicholson

“Bound” 09.10.26 - 31.10.26

In Bound Jess Nicholson (Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu, Pākehā) and Harriet Hawksworth explore the term as both a connecting force and a movement towards a future destination. Nicholson and Hawksworth’s sculptural practices approach making with a focus on material integrity, recycled resources, waste-reduction and maintaining connections between extracted materials and the land and ecosystems they have been removed from. 

In the works of Bound, repeated forms and gestures coalesce. Chain links and curves multiply, becoming constructions which are both unified and fragmentary. Through their continued exploration of interlinking rī (circles) Nicholson plays with tohu, tension, movement, and shadow to uncover the potential within whenua to connect with their whakapapa while questioning practices of extraction and anthropocentric relationships to land. Forms emerge from the wall and disappear again - elusive like taniwha - origins clear but destination unknown; they hang in suspension, disconnected from the earth, but unrealised in their current state. These intricate chain sculptures reconsider traditional ideas of landscape art, and open up questions around material, place, and belonging.

In new works presented here from her Riding Mountain (2026 - ongoing) series, Hawksworth uses continuous looping forms and repeated gestures to recall tangled ecological cycles, fragmented and reconfigured by industrial intervention. With the series title being drawn from one of the earliest documented roller coasters, the Riding Mountain works also look at humanity’s physical desire for propulsive motion and the way built structures direct how we move through space and experience our environment. 

Through labour intensive processes Hawksworth and Nicholson acknowledge and make relevant the previous lives and histories of their materials, finding forms which reflect movement and connection.

You can view Harriet’s available work here and Jess’s work here