Eloise Kirk, Garden Sculpture 2, 2022. Plaster, clay, glaze, lightweight cement, 45 × 20 × 10cm. Courtesy: the artist and Gallery 9.

Eloise Kirk has been a finalist in the Fishers Ghost Art Prize, the John Fries Emerging Artist Award, the Macquarie Bank Emerging Artist Award and the Grace Cossington Smith Art Prize. In 2014 Kirk was awarded the Art Gallery of NSW residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. She was the recipient of the CAT Shotgun Award, a partnership between Contemporary Art Tasmania, Detached and Mona in 2018/2019.

Through the process of assemblage I do a lot of building, breaking and rebuilding until the sculptures get to a point where I feel they are successful. This has been a practice which I have embraced more and more in my work and I feel that it’s at the centre of my making. The works are not planned and they come to an end point organically.

Through he process of hammering, chiselling, smashing and plastering, the works speak to me about materiality, the destructive nature of industry and the natural resources under foot. I am interested in using raw materials, remains and forms which surround me and linger at the edges and under surface layers of my immediate reality.

As well as taking a critical eye to environmental issues and the over consumption of natural resources, my practice explores elements of hope and a playful reforming of that which is unsuccessful, cast aside or decayed. – Eloise Kirk