Kudos acknowledges and pays respect to the Gadigal and Bidjigal people of the Eora nation. They are the traditional custodians of the land Kudos operates on. We create, design, share, and exchange our work and knowledge on this important meeting place. We pay our respects to elders past and present and extend that respect to any First Nations people who engage with Kudos. This is and always will be Aboriginal land.
| My practice investigates how we are all physically and materially entangled with the environments we inhabit. Working across sculpture installation, moving image and experimental material process, I explore how light energy, movement and transformation, with a particular interest in how relationships between bodies, materials and surroundings shape our experiences spatially. At the center of my practice is a desire to cultivate presence. I am interested in slowing down enough to notice everyday phenomena that might otherwise go unnoticed:sunlight catching a car window, colour reflecting off surfaces or shadows moving on a wall. These observations have led me to consider how we experience our surroundings on the daily, not as passive observers but as bodies continually interacting with the world around us. Using mirror-sanded and heat patinated stainless steel, I create surfaces that interact with light through reflection and structural colour. I am drawn to materials that reveal the fundamental forces beyond themselves allowing fleeting interactions to become perceptible through them. Light, movement and environmental conditions are not just elements surrounding my work, but active participants in its formation. Informed by relational and ecological thinking, my practice challenges the separation of human and non-human worlds. I approach creating as a process of exchange between materials, bodies, objects and environmental forces, allowing uncertainty and experimentation to shape the outcome. Through immersive and participatory work, I desire to create moments of awareness that invite people to reconsider their relationship with the spaces they inhabit. darciegravitisstudio.squarespace.com @darciegravitis_studio |
| Within the Horizons of Relations Within the Horizons of Relations (2026) Mirror-sanded and heat-patinated stainless steel, kinetic suspension mechanism, light. Dimensions: Variable; final dimensions dependent on installation. |
| Comprising concentric rings of mirror-sanded and heat-patinated stainless steel, the work rotates slowly around a stationary light source, producing shifting iridescent reflections and geometric shadows that extend across the surrounding architecture. The colour of the steel emerges through heat-induced surface oxidation and its interaction with light, rather than conventional pigment. As the sculpture rotates, its appearance continually transforms according to the movement of the material, the position of the viewer and the conditions of the surrounding space. My practice is driven by a desire to cultivate presence: to slow down and notice the subtle exchanges between ourselves and our environments. Drawing on relational and ecological frameworks, I approach materials not as passive objects to be controlled, but as active participants in the formation of an artwork. Light becomes both a material and a collaborator, revealing relationships that would otherwise remain imperceptible. The installation extends beyond the physical sculpture into the space it activates. Visitors are invited to move around the work and observe how their perspective changes the experience of its reflections and shadows. Rather than presenting a fixed image, the work produces an evolving spatial composition shaped by material, movement, light and perception. Through this interplay, Within the Horizons of Relations considers how we are never entirely separate from the environments we inhabit. It invites viewers to experience space as a network of ongoing exchanges, in which human and non-human forces continually shape one another. |