Siobhan Hapaska is an Irish artist born in 1963. Her practice is wide-ranging, often producing mixed-media installations and sculptures. Her use of media is unlimited working from natural materials such as trees, skulls and fur, merged with a diverse vocabulary of materials an unique objects, synthetic materials. Hapaska also often incorporates sound and light elements into her work. Not only is diversity and exclusivity evident in her large range of media use, but also in the types of work produced, being both figurative and abstract. Because of the nature of her work and the interesting assemblages of contrasting materials, the work holds a lot of history and becomes open to multiple readings, allowing the effortless movement between abstraction and figuration. Though her work can be representative and hyper realistic, the combination of materials allow the work for a more open ended interpretation, addressing themes of communication, interiority, subjugation versus domination, loneliness and hurt. Hapaska has mentioned that she prefers her work to be this open-ended, stating “I think some people get very uneasy when they can’t find immediate, concrete explanations. I like ideas that are adrift. When things are not absolutes they become more interesting, because it throws the responsibility back on you, to understand what you might be.” The relationship and duality created upon the work is enigmatic, in states of conflict, distress, desire or compassion. At times, her sculptures touch upon different belief systems, ideologies or faiths, but never in a way that is ultimately resolved or redeemed. Rather, we are given an insight into the combustibility of the human condition, with all its flaws and contradictions; tenderness and destructiveness.

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