Bound by the Sky

ARTIST STATEMENT
This body of work explores the profound yet often unspoken connection we all share beneath the expanse of the sky. The title, Bound by the Sky, operates as a framework through which I examine the interplay of human interconnectedness and environmental fragility. This is not merely an observation of physical reality—that the sky is a literally envelopes us all. Nor is it solely a metaphysical notion. Instead, it is an exploration of our shared condition, inextricably tied to the ecological and political realities of our time.

The sky, a symbol of boundlessness, now embodies the weight of our uneven accountability. In this work, it becomes a site of convergence, not only in its beauty and vastness but also as a repository of human impact. The atmosphere, once a space of awe and wonder, now holds the traces of pollution and environmental degradation—marks of an unfairly shared culpability and interconnected fate. Through this lens, the sky is both a unifying force and a reminder of the urgent entanglement of our futures.

This series draws on Australian landscapes and skies, whose vastness and clarity hold an enduring influence on my practice. Yet the connection it proposes transcends geographic specificity, reflecting on global interdependence. Through this work, I seek to create a space where beauty and urgency coexist, encouraging audiences to reflect on the tenuous yet profound ties that bind us all beneath the sky.

CATALOGUE ESSAY BY DEBORAH CLARK
Last year when I opened an exhibition of Hannah’s work in Canberra, at Grainger Gallery, I noted that although she had not exhibited in a gallery in her home town for some years her marvellous art has been widely experienced by Canberrans across the city – even if they didn’t know her name. 

Each day Canberra commuters travel on the light rail they see Hannah’s delicious large tracery drawings on glass which feature on all thirteen rail stops (Intersections). Her art is now woven into our urban experience and has lit up the city in public displays since her graduation just over a decade ago: digital light projections on the historic Sydney and Melbourne buildings in the Enlighten Festival (2019); the sinuous Shroud suspended above Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra’s contemporary biennial Contour556 (2020); in installations at the National Portrait Gallery, and the Canberra Museum and Gallery’s glass-walled space on Civic Square (2017); and her recently unveiled 36 metre long sculpture Life force which commands the main corridor and stairwell of Canberra Hospital’s new Critical Services Building. Hannah also recently won the commission for a major signature work at the National Arboretum of Canberra, Drawing breath, which will be sited in the large front dam near the Arboretum entrance, where its folded cloudlike form will transform the gateway space.

Hannah has lit up other cities and towns too – with substantial public art commissions in Sydney and Brisbane, and participation in a myriad of exhibitions nationally and internationally: in Berlin, Cambridge, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, Italy, France, and in the Pilbara. Since she graduated in 2013 from the ANU School of Art she has been incredibly productive with a purposeful focus on the development of her practice. Her art is continually evolving, and the sense of movement and dynamism in the work is mirrored in the way she pushes her practice forward, working seamlessly across a variety of disciplines and modes of making: graphic traditions, sculpture, weaving, metalwork etc.

At the heart of Hannah’s art is drawing; when she makes sculpture she is drawing in space – with aluminium, wire, acrylic, salt, LED lights – and creating a kind of cosmic architecture. 

With these sometimes unlikely materials Hannah’s art is so finely crafted, refined in its making and in its attention to detail – to line and form and heft, and to the craft of making. In this craft of making she’s joined the ranks for me of some of this country’s most imaginative contemporary artists who work across mediums and disciplines and share an extraordinary – almost obsessive – attention to detail: artists such as Fiona Hall, Rosslynd Piggott and eX deMedici. 

Grounded in traditional techniques of making such as the repetitive work of knotting, Hannah’s practice is highly inventive, and dynamic rather than static – the pulsing movement within individual works suggests their relationship to universal natural forces. Standing with one of her large sculptural installations one has the sensation of liquid movement, the flow of time and tide and the cycle of expiration and regeneration.

Being taken into one of Hannah’s labyrinthine works of art is a cognitive journey into its abstract material form and the spaces created within and around the work, which become spaces of the imagination, where you feel a connection across the cosmos, and the endless possibilities of all kinds of connections and interconnections. Her intriguing, ambitious, powerful and fearless art never stops making you think, as well as feel.

Deborah Clark  2025