Bianca Hester - Groundwork

'Groundwork' finds its footing in the volcanic terrain of Tamaki Makaurau, Auckland, New Zealand. It is an expanded sculptural project by Sydney-based artist Bianca Hester that grew out of a series of research residencies in 2015, and is both social and geological in scope. Focused on a series of sites across the city where human activity, geology, and ecology have converged in fraught and revealing ways, the book maps connections between various landscapes. It encompasses walking, sculptural production, exhibition, archival research, and writing that took place between 2015 and 2020, and proposes ways to apprehend the complex sedimentations of a city.