| liam sinha |
| Liam Sinha is an emerging anti-disciplinary artist whose practice explores memory, ecology and material transformation. Working primarily in sculpture, he combines scavenged metal, timber, ceramics and earth through carving, welding, imprinting and natural weathering, creating hybrid figures that invite more-than-human life, and resist static objecthood. A watershed in his practice came with AIN'T LIKE STEPPIN' ON ANTS (2025), an effigy for his late dog Rocco. This work marked a shift toward myth-making and world-building, embodying resilience, grief and the responsibilities of custodianship and co-existence. Sinha's methodology is deeply shaped by encounters with the more-than-human world, Country, community and material exploration. Recent projects reflect his commitment to ecological responsibility and socially engaged practice, integrating lessons from archaeology, architecture and non-Western knowledge holders. He has exhibited in Burwood Art Prize, and participated in UNSW's Sculpture 3 student led exhibiton, expanding his practice within collaborative and public contexts. Sinha's ongoing work seeks to forge connections between personal narrative and collective ecological futures, producing sculptural forms that are at once contemplative, improvised, and alive. @kampungcatdog |
approx. 1.6m H x 0.5m W 0.8m D
The tectonics of this project are hidden in plain sight. This is my attempt to explain it in plain speaking. 2 years ago, I lost my dog Rocco to kidney failure. Rocco was born with congenital megaesophagus - the lack of throat motility, meaning he could not swallow. Each meal, drink of water, clump of grass, or odd critter that a curious puppy is bound to investigate with their mouth, potentially risked aspiration pneumonia. Every chewed-up stick or toy, every swallow, a potential death sentence. I was his carer, his parent, his lifeline and part of a network on which he utterly depended. Despite all his tragedies, not only did he persevere, but he also thrived. He was a being full of will, of robust cheeky energy - through him I experienced the joys of pure unadulterated life.
This sculpture serves as an effigy to the painful realisations, feelings and meditations I have had since his passing. In my practice I have considered the site, not only just as the location where this sculpture is situated now, but as the place in which I and all my kin exist, and of my journeys to and from these places. In my journeys I pick up scrap metal, I sit and spend time watching animals - human and nonhuman alike - I ponder the eternal and infinite, appreciate the temporary and finite, and try to connect with All that exists between/within. Experiencing the suffering and death of another firsthand broke me - my attempts at vegetarianism, hopes of future veganism and contradictory failings since his death, are present in this project. AIN'T LIKE STEPPIN' ON ANTS is my current ode to living, the responsibility of making space, myth making and world building. For myself but especially for our more-than-human companions, big and small. It is a manifestation and culmination of life forces and a practice of being present - not being at home wasting time, playing games, abusing substances, consuming animal products, and being complicit in cruelty and complacency.
This sculpture is a 3-legged dog - for Rocco, and all beings with disabilities that go for walks without skipping a beat. The torso is my (failed) interpretation of an ascetic Buddha with a beastial head - my attempts at being better but falling short, my anger, grief, sorrow and revitalised will to live. It is made using scavenged and recycled materials, hand-built, kiln-fired, bashed, beaten, hammered, welded, screwed, clamped, stamped with rocks, painted with mud, rubbed with earth, and carved from recently felled eucalypts. The wooden feet house holes, potential nests for our native insects - ants, bees, wasps, beetles - and arachnids. Scavenged metal protrude from one ceramic leg, forming the microcosmic structure for the weaving of webs that will one day span the spaces in-between.