Kirsty Lillico’s Heavy Falls is now on display at Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery, bringing her Wellington-based practice into the gallery’s new wing. The show matters because it places large suspended textile-based sculpture in front of visitors who may know her for discarded carpet, not for the wider material range now on view.
2025 gives the exhibition its current frame: Heavy Falls grew out of Lillico’s artist residency at Tylee Cottage, and the work now sits in a gallery space shaped to handle more ambitious hanging forms. Visitors moving through the wing will find the suspended pieces working in dialogue with the suspended glass viewing box, rather than sitting as a separate display on the floor.
Tylee Cottage and 2025
2025 is also the year Lillico created Shadowlicker, a hand-tufted rug made from sisal, jute, wool, cotton and synthetic felt. The timeline matters because it shows Heavy Falls as a continuation of studio testing rather than a sudden pivot: the residency at Tylee Cottage gave her a place to push scale, surface and hanging structure before the work reached Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery.
Full Moon Tonight Buck Moon is not part of this exhibition, but it sits alongside the same kind of audience appetite for named cultural events. Here, the draw is more material than theatrical: Lillico is using salvaged rope, sisal, cotton, concrete, paint, plaster and felt to build forms that read as sculpture but keep the softness and labour of textile work visible.
Shadowlicker at Sarjeant Gallery
Shadowlicker gives the clearest clue to how Lillico works. It is made from sisal, jute, wool, cotton and synthetic felt, and it is described as a hand-tufted rug. That matters because Heavy Falls is not simply a larger version of the same object; it broadens the method into a suspended installation, which is a different viewing proposition for the gallery and a different test of how far the material language can be stretched.
Isabella Loudon is the other useful point of comparison in the material from the gallery: the reference places Lillico within a sculptural conversation about surface and form, but Heavy Falls stays distinct because its scale comes from salvaged components rather than polished finish. The exhibition title, along with witty works such as Tough Little Bitch and Butter My Muffin, suggests the show wants the objects to carry attitude as well as weight.
Heavy Falls at Te Whare
The practical takeaway is simple: visitors to Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery can see Heavy Falls now, and they should expect a room of suspended textile-based work rather than a conventional sculpture display. If you know Lillico only through discarded carpet, this is the sharper read: Heavy Falls shows an artist using recycled and tactile materials to make work that belongs as much to gallery architecture as to floor-based craft.
