Australian sculptor Hanna Hoyne is concerned with the embodied experience of art objects and creates off-beat and surreal mixed media sculptures and installations. Hoyne’s output is diverse, but at the heart of her work is an abiding interest in the human condition and our attempts at defining our conscious world.

Hoyne is perhaps best known for her Protectornauts series. In these large installation pieces the artist creates astronaut-type suits from Asian ceremonial papers. Despite their delicate medium, the suits are both commanding and conceptually potent. The ephemeral protection suits protect the psyche, the heart and the soul, not the body. They are installed in space without the body present within them. The visual impact of the works, and others like it, can be overwhelming.

Her smaller scale pieces, Mind Organs, conceptually compliment her larger work. The works are created initially with cardboard and plastic and rendered with fbreglass, glue and plaster and finished with faux gold leaf, taken from the ritual Chinese ‘joss’ papers. The sculpture seems at once alien and familiar; monumental and delicate. In her works Hoyne reflects the feats and struggles of the human imagination. In the Astronaut series in particular, she considers the way in which we deal with the enormity of science and contentious issues such as genetic engineering.