Shelter of Hollows

<p dir="ltr">Research Background </p><p dir="ltr">Shelter of Hollows is a large-scale suspended sculpture for Macquarie's North Tower that investigates the poetics of void and hollow form through site-specific public art practice. The work connects across Martin Place station to another work Continuum by translating and transitioning geometric impossibilities—the Möbius strip and Klein bottle—into organic cavernous forms. This research engages critically with Australian modernist sculptors Margel Hinder, Tom Bass, and Lyndon Dadswell (whose works from 1964 anchor the Martin Place precinct), examining their investigations of positive/negative space, organic abstraction, and architectural relief. The cave motif functions as both material investigation and theoretical framework, drawing on architectural theory, Platonic philosophy, and feminist spatial theory to explore hollow forms as sites of generative absence. </p><p dir="ltr">Research Significance </p><p dir="ltr">This work advances knowledge in sculptural form by recontextualising mid-century Australian modernist concerns with void and organic abstraction for contemporary public art contexts. It contributes new methodologies for site-responsive practice that engage infrastructural transit spaces—train stations, commuter hubs—as sites for conceptual exploration rather than mere decoration. The suspended sculpture creates formal and conceptual dialogues across time, establishing intergenerational conversations about sculptural form between Dadswell, Hinder, Bass, and contemporary practice. By inverting the cave—turning it inside out—the work challenges conventional relationships between interior/exterior, presence/absence, operating as both object and inhabited space within the cavernous North Tower architecture. </p><p dir="ltr">Research Contribution </p><p dir="ltr">Shelter of Hollows contributes original knowledge through its material synthesis of earthen elements—ceramics, metal, glass—that reference industrial transit infrastructure while creating unexpected sculptural alchemy. The work demonstrates how geometric abstraction can morph into organic form while maintaining conceptual rigor, offering new approaches to representing temporal passage and human continuity through static sculpture. It establishes a practical model for public art that operates simultaneously as architectural intervention, historical homage, and theoretical proposition. The research validates hollow form as generative conceptual territory, proving sculptural absence can be dynamically present. This advances public art practice by showing how suspended work in commuter spaces can embody multiple temporalities—ancient (cave), historical (1960s modernism), contemporary (transit infrastructure)—creating layered meaning accessible to diverse publics.</p>