Skin 1

This artwork featured in BorderLands (2026).

Skin explores architectural boundaries of defence. During WWII a PR morale-boosting exercise saw UK civilians urged to remove the ornate, spiked Victorian fences that edge parks and properties so that they could be melted down into weapon supplies. In fact, London’s fence metal was useless for military repurpose.

Skin 1 evokes the saying that an “Englishman’s garden is his castle” and presents the garden as a fiercely defended territory, a personal space that mirrors a wider political stance. Closed off property becomes subtracted from the common landscape. The contrast between the ornate gates and the sinister, lethal security blades belies the sense of the gentility that is traditionally associated with the English garden.

Image: Gabriella Hirst, Skin 1, Wrought iron, garden planters, plants. Installation view, BorderLands, Hay Castle, 2026. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. Photographer, Finn Beales.

 

About the artist

Gabriella Hirst

Gabriella Hirst (she/her) is an artist. She was born and grew up on Cammeraygal land (Australia) and is currently living between Berlin and London. She works primarily with moving image, performance, and with the garden as a site of critique and care. Gabriella’s practice explores the politics of capture- most recently in relation to museums, gardens and irrigation. She maintains an ongoing research/garden project with curator Warren Harper navigating the entanglements of nuclear armament and colonial gardening practices.

Gabriella’s recent projects have been exhibited and commissioned by the Kunsthalle Osnabrück (DE), Focal Point Gallery (UK), The Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Australian Center for the Moving Image (AU). She is the recipient of the 2020 ACMI/Ian Potter Moving Image Commission, is a previous Marten Bequest Scholar and a recipient of the John Crampton Fellowship. She is an associate lecturer in Media Studies with the RCA School of Architecture.