Siobhán Hapaska
Kerlin Gallery is delighted to announce The Weight of Nothingness, an exhibition of new sculpture and photography by Siobhán Hapaska that explores absence as a material and as a psychological condition.
In The man with a stone in his stomach inverts sunflowers. a lone figure stands on a makeshift plinth. Their core is hollowed out and filled with a stone, the identity is obscured or they are without one. The darkened skeletal framework is a precarious one, simultaneously devotional and exhausted, its offering of inverted blue sunflowers are denied their upright sunny, optimistic disposition.
There is a heavy stone, a weight of nothingness at its core.
Surrounding the central figure is a new series of wall-mounted sculptures meticulously constructed from twisted concrete cloth with resin and Jesmonite. Concrete cloth — a material associated with reinforcement and containment — is manipulated by Hapaska into forms that appear bodily. Each work has its own glass like forms escaping from the folds or growing on its surface, some red, like enlarged blood platelets, others black, each a dark lens into another infinite universe.
A parallel series of photographic work captures the artist’s breath in a cold, darkened studio. Barely visible and transient, the images register breath as condensation and disappearance simultaneously — a minimal but insistent index of bodily presence.
The work in this exhibition continues to refine Hapaska’s longstanding engagement with material instability, disorientation and our contemporary psychic dislocation. In one particular work, Article 1 UDHR, Hapaska represents the very best of human intentions, the foundational principles of dignity, liberty, and equality spelt out in shells that are eroding, on course to disappear. At the centre of each a void.
Siobhán Hapaska
Cosmocytes on Concrete 2, 2026
concrete canvas, jesmonite, epoxy resin, mirror
85 x 117 x 21 cm / 33.5 x 46.1 x 8.3 in
Siobhán Hapaska
Article 1 UDHR, 2026
aluminium composite, jesmonite, uv resin, limpet shells
75 x 145 x 3 cm / 29.5 x 57.1 x 1.2 in
Siobhán Hapaska
The man with a stone in his stomach inverts sunflowers, 2026
aluminium, Jesmonite, wood, epoxy resin
200 x 110 x 71 cm / 78.7 x 43.3 x 28 in
Siobhán Hapaska
“Yeah, you know, I’m doing really really well, really very well, it’s a beautiful thing, everybody’s saying it”, 2026
ready made high performance rubber tyre, jesmonite, epoxy resin, turkey tail feathers, painted wooden plinth
67 x 90 x 50 cm / 26.4 x 35.4 x 19.7 in sculpture
99.5 x 99.5 x 20 cm / 39.2 x 39.2 x 7.9 in plinth
Siobhán Hapaska
Cosmocytes on Concrete 1, 2026
concrete canvas, jesmonite, epoxy resin, mirror
82 x 38 x 22 cm / 32.3 x 15 x 8.7 in
Siobhán Hapaska
The thought of blood on concrete 2, 2026
concrete canvas, jesmonite, epoxy resin, mirror
40.5 x 22 x 13 cm / 15.9 x 8.7 x 5.1 in
Siobhán Hapaska
Cosmocytes on Concrete 3, 2026
concrete canvas, jesmonite, epoxy resin, mirror
66 x 102 x 20 cm / 26 x 40.2 x 7.9 in
Siobhán Hapaska
Inside over six hundred million possibilities 1, 2026
archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm
edition of 3 + 1 AP
67.5 x 67.5 x 4 cm / 26.6 x 26.6 x 1.6 in framed
Siobhán Hapaska
The thought of blood on concrete 1, 2026
concrete canvas, jesmonite, epoxy resin, mirror
27.5 x 24.5 x 11.5 cm / 10.8 x 9.6 x 4.5 in
Siobhán Hapaska
Inside over six hundred million possibilities 7, 2026
archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm
edition of 3 + 1 AP
68.5 x 86.5 x 4 cm / 27 x 34.1 x 1.6 in framed
Siobhán Hapaska
The thought of blood on concrete 4, 2026
concrete canvas, jesmonite, epoxy resin, mirror
44 x 27 x 25 cm / 17.3 x 10.6 x 9.8 in
Siobhán Hapaska
Inside over six hundred million possibilities 3, 2026
archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm
edition of 3 + 1AP
67.5 x 67.5 x 4 cm / 26.6 x 26.6 x 1.6 in framed
about the artist
Siobhán Hapaska
b.1963 Belfast, Northern Ireland
Siobhán Hapaska has over the past three decades created a singular body of work dedicated to an investigation of injustice, conflict, faith and the human condition. In so doing the work has moved effortlessly between abstraction and figuration, between the readymade and the highly crafted and between the monumental and the intimate. The resulting works spark humour and pathos, reflecting upon our place in a world filled with violent opposing forces and conflicting ideologies. Though they carry a sense of disquiet, her works are always a testament to the perseverance of hope, desire and longing in the face of adverse global conditions and political or spiritual unrest, often undershot with a dark wit, a playfulness, and a devotion to physical objects as transmitters of empathy and emotion.
Medici Lion, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 2023/24
Hapaska’s recent solo exhibitions include Medici Lion, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2023-24); Kunstmuseum St Gallen, Switzerland (2020); and John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton (2019). Current and recent group exhibitions include Art as Agency, Irish Museum of Modern Art (continues until 2027) and LOEWE Crafted World, Shanghai Exhibition Centre (2024). Her work has been exhibited at MoMA Ps1, New York; Serpentine Gallery, London; Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris; Singapore Art Museum; Museu de Arte de São Paulo, and in solo presentations at Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall; Museum Boijmans Van Beuingan, Rotterdam; the Barbican, Camden Arts Centre and the ICA in London. She has participated in major international exhibitions including Documenta X, the British Art Show, Glasgow International, and the 49th and 56th Venice Biennales. Collections include Hirshhorn, Washington; MIT, Cambridge; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Tate, London; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; The National Gallery of Ireland; Arts Council of Ireland; Arts Council of Northern Ireland; Ulster Museum, Belfast; Kunstmuseum St.Gallen; Magasin III, Stockholm Konsthall; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Shenzhen, China and LOEWE.