'CURIO sculpture #11' — Kelly Larkin

Artist Statement

Kelly Larkin’s sculptural practice is an exploration of form, light, and materiality. Informed by sustainability and instinctual making, her work embraces imperfection, allowing each sculpture to evolve through process rather than premeditation.

Working with recycled paper and plaster, Kelly creates delicate wall sculptures that balance rawness, refinement, and fragility. Each piece emerges through an intuitive process of folding, layering, and shaping—transforming everyday materials and fragments of notebooks, shopping lists, and scrap paper into sculptural compositions that catch and hold the light.

Her works echo the natural world, recalling salt settling on stone, eroded rock formations, peeling paperbark, and tidal-worn shells. Surfaces bear the imprint of a brushstroke; edges hold the crispness of a freshly folded page. These forms invite reflection on the beauty found in everyday materials, the traces of daily life, and the ephemeral moments of shifting light and shadow.

Kelly’s practice is instinctual—an interplay between soft, painterly surfaces and sharp, angular folds. She allows the material to dictate its own course, responding to bends and textures as they emerge. The result is a body of work that feels at once organic and deliberate—objects shaped by folds of light.

Exhibition Text: CURIO

Lander—Se presents CURIO—the debut solo exhibition by artist Kelly Larkin.

A study in light, material, and memory, CURIO is an intimate collection of sculptural works by Mornington Peninsula-based artist Kelly Larkin, inspired by delicate curiosities of the natural world.

Crafted from recycled paper and plaster, these wall sculptures hold traces of daily life—fragments of notebooks, shopping lists, and scrap paper—transformed through a process of folding, layering, and pigmenting. Each sculpture is both sharp and soft, its angular forms shifting like sundials throughout the day, while its surface textured like stone shaped by the sea.

The colours within CURIO trace back to a singular, cherished memory—a ‘perfect day’ spent at sea, where the blues of the coastline, warm sand, sun-bleached boats, and the soft purples and oranges of collected shells imprinted themselves in Kelly’s mind. These hues, now embedded in her CURIO sculptures, evoke the feeling of time suspended—a moment held still.

In this exhibition, Kelly’s works speak to the fragility and endurance of our surroundings—the way elements weather and reshape the landscape, the way light transforms objects, and the way simple materials can hold profound significance. CURIO invites us to look closer, to appreciate the overlooked, and to find beauty in the playful, unfolding details of the everyday.

CURIO by Kelly Larkin—shifting sculptures of light and shadow, folded, pleated, and pigmented forms on display from April 12th until May 11th at Lander—Se, Red Hill.