Artist: Bridget Harvey

Ruup & Form presents Of the Rubble (rudera), a solo exhibition by Bridget Harvey. Working across sculpture, drawing, and installation, Harvey considers the material and symbolic afterlives of waste, asking what remains and what might emerge in its wake.

Waste, within Harvey’s practice, is not static. It moves through cycles of dispersal and accumulation, breaking down while simultaneously gathering into new formations. These shifting conditions give rise to what the artist describes as ‘wastescapes’—speculative landscapes where discarded matter becomes a site of attention, care, and potential.

At the heart of the exhibition is an expanded approach to drawing. Harvey works fluidly across ink, pencil, emulsion paint, watercolour, and gouache, layering these with processes of scraping, stitching, cutting, and collage. Repeated marks and motifs accumulate into visual languages that construct imagined terrains shaped by erosion, repair, and time. Drawing here operates not as a fixed image, but as an active, evolving field.

Alongside these works, Harvey employs ceramic waste, fused glass, metal, and found materials to create sculptural forms that sit between object and idea. Ceramic shards and broken glass are reconfigured as symbolic bodies, their surfaces etched with protective marks and gestural inscriptions. Damaged plates, inscribed with slogans, extend the artist’s ongoing engagement with activism, embedding acts of resistance within the material itself.

“Waste is never still,” reflects Harvey. “It shifts, fragments, and gathers again. I am interested in how these movements create their own landscapes, where what is broken is not discarded but held. Through repair, these fragments begin to speak differently, forming worlds that sit somewhere between loss and possibility.”

Reflecting on the collaboration, Varuna Kollanethu, founder and director Ruup & Form shares, “It has been a privilege to work with Bridget from the early stages of her practice and to witness its evolution across mediums. Her intuitive movement between materials and techniques reveals a clear and considered trajectory of growth. Each shift feels purposeful, expanding both the language and the reach of the work. We are delighted to present her first solo exhibition with the gallery, marking a significant moment in this ongoing journey.”

Installed as constellations, stacks, and framed compositions, the works evoke fragments of a post- human landscape. They carry traces of past use while remaining open to new readings, inviting viewers to consider how materials might be held, repaired, and reimagined. In this context, ruin is not an endpoint, but a generative condition.

Of the Rubble (rudera) reflects on cycles of breakdown and reformation. It offers a measured and contemplative proposition: that through acts of care, attention, and repair, new forms of meaning can emerge from what has been cast aside.