Art Edit has selected Samantha Haničar as an outstanding artist to have on your radar.
Trained in Fine Arts & Design at Newcastle Art School, Australian-Croatian artist Samantha Haničar’s practice encompasses drawing and sculpture. Brutalist architecture, Spomeniks (WWII memorials built in the former Yugoslavia), and the concrete socialist housing found in central and Eastern Europe are some of the influences that inform her artmaking. Haničar’s sculptural works are underpinned by the distinctly unglamourous elements within our built environment of carparks, road infrastructure and construction – both in subject and substance. Discarded materials are married with forms and structures of her own making, carrying remnants of functionality while being transformed into compelling objets d’art. In the last eighteen months alone, Haničar has exhibited work at a regional gallery, presented a solo exhibition, and been named a finalist in several major art prizes – the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, Muswellbrook Art Prize and Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize.
Above: Samantha Haničar, Architectonic No.4, 2022. Concrete and steel, 42 x 25 x 10cm.
Courtesy: The artist and Lost Bear Gallery.