Mikala Dwyer
Mikala Dwyer’s explorations with material, time and space push at the limits of traditional forms and invite her audiences into new realms at the intersection of the personal and the historical.
Image credit: Mikala Dwyer, Lamp Sculpture 1, 2024, PETG, acrylic paint, lightbulb, string, 90 x 90 x 50 cm. Photo: David Suyasa. Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Many Sydney commuters will by now have experienced Mikala Dwyer’s monumental public artwork, Continuum (2024), at Martin Place metro station. Greeting passengers at either entrance to the station, the commissioned artwork – consisting of a dazzling, floor-to-ceiling mosaic and a series of gleaming, suspended sculptures – exemplifies Dwyer’s interest in both physical spaces and abstract realms. The metal forms (steel, brass, bronze and aluminium) of the sculptures punctuate the vast atriums of this new civic space; their shapes are drawn from mathematical theory – a Möbius strip, a-just-so-angled cylinder, two-dimensional planes – bridging the urban and the organic in their sensibility. This rich mosaic of converging lines conjuring the visuals of train travel (physical tracks and motion through time) is perfectly contemporary, reflecting the mosaic as a grand historical, civic medium.
Indeed, Continuum functions across time in a way that reflects Dwyer’s practice as a whole. A leading figure in the history of Australian sculpture, her work is an ongoing investigation, both consistent and ever-expanding, simultaneously revisiting and reinventing forms as she investigates the forces that shape the physical, spiritual and temporal worlds around us.
November of 2024 saw Dwyer return from largescale public spaces to a more intimate scale with her exhibition Skyring at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. Here, in the gallery’s darkened, more personal zone, the artist creates a kind of immersive, multi-temporal space referencing decades of individual practice, centuries of art history and channelling aeons ... Subscribe to read all articles in full
