Sheila Hicks
Sophie Travers, NGV Magazine
February 2024
The NGV Triennial 2023 is, forgive the metaphor, woven through with textile art. The cornerstone of the rich diversity of artworks commissioned and acquired from international artists is Sheila Hicks’s monumental Nowhere to go, 2022, generously supported by Triennial Champion, NGVWA. This lopsided mountain of brightly coloured acrylic boulders is the kind of delightful intervention in the Gallery that NGV audiences adore. hicks’s works, and this piece in particular, are irresistibly open and attractive. They invite immediate engagement, and while they do not all play with scale of this magnitude, they always pull you in. Hicks is fascinated by the seemingly endless possibilities of the materials she manipulates: their colours, textures, structures and forms. Her career is characterised by restless innovation and curiosity. She is an excellent choice for a wide-ranging exhibition, such as the NGV Triennial, where the key thematic pillars of Magic, Matter and Memory anchor more than seventy-five projects by 100 artists from around the world. […]