Originally conceived as a painting exhibition to follow on from its 2024 debut, Hazelhurst Art Centre’s New South Vol. 2: Recent Sculpture and Installation Art now brings together leading sculptors and installation artists from across southern Australasia. Curated by Victoria Wynne-Jones, the exhibition offers a ‘state of the arts’ glimpse into practitioners working in these mediums today, foregrounding debates around sculpture versus installation. Wynne-Jones explains:
“I’ve noticed ongoing discussions around the idea that we’re in a post-disciplinary moment—that sculpture no longer exists or that everything is installation or conceptual—but many of the artists in this show are still deliberately choosing to describe their practice as sculpture.”
One such internationally renowned artist, Claire Lambe, revels in calling herself a sculptor, embracing the tension of a medium some see as unfashionable. Lambe presents House of Bones (2017), which Wynne-Jones describes as “challenging what we think of as sculptural installation in that it’s quite cinegraphic and interrogates the boundaries of installation art.”
Jacqueline Stojanović, ‘A net woven from my own hair’, 2023, silk, wood, colour pencil and metal mesh, dimensions variable. Presented at Parnell Project Space, Auckland NZ. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Sam Hartnett.
The inclusion of established artists such as Hany Armanious and Alicia Frankovich is balanced by mid-career and emerging practitioners. Jacqueline Stojanović’s ephemeral suspended silk works engage with histories of craft, while Chunxiao Qu uses dark humour to explore the monstrous feminine and the strange fluidity of language. The intergenerational exhibition fosters lively dialogue, with resonances across generations creating a dynamic conversation defined by varying approaches, experiences and scale.
With its playful and ambiguous title, New South Vol. 2 deliberately complicates definitions of “new” and “south.” The works presented are recent and have not previously been shown in a southern Sydney context, while “south” is considered less a geographical marker than a relational and conceptual frame. Together, the exhibition offers a fresh lens on contemporary sculpture and installation, revealing how artists experiment and play with space, form and concept today.
New South Vol. 2:
Recent Sculpture and Installation Art
Hazelhurst Art Centre
24 April—21 June
This article was originally published in the March/April 2026 print edition of Art Guide Australia.