In ASSEMBLIES, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland-based artist Jack Hadley presents a sculptural installation of modular aluminium structures that occupy a space between function and fantasy, play and precision. Drawing inspiration from fashion show set design, playground architecture, and industrial manufacturing, Hadley explores how structures shape the way we move, gather, and relate to one another.

 Each sculpture in the exhibition is made from laser-cut aluminium, a material more commonly associated with mass production and mechanical efficiency than with the handmade or the personal. Yet Hadley’s works resist that rigidity. They are modular, designed to be taken apart, reconfigured, and assembled again in new arrangements. This openness invites a choreography of change, suggesting that meaning and form are never fixed, but always contingent on context, touch, and imagination.

 The smooth surfaces, slots, and curves of these structures resemble furniture or stage props, they hint at utility without ever fully offering it. This ambiguity is deliberate: the works sit just outside of use, creating a kind of sculptural theatre where the viewer is cast as both audience and participant.

The artist’s reference points, from Isamu Noguchi’s playgrounds to the temporary worlds of fashion runways, temporary structures like trade fair display systems and architectural follies, speak to a fascination with how environments are constructed to guide experience. Like Noguchi, Hadley sees play as a serious form of engagement, a way to test the limits of creativity and control. His sculptures, with their modularity and adaptability, suggest that play can also be a form of assembly, of materials, ideas, and people.

Despite their industrial origins, these works possess a poetic lightness. The aluminium’s reflective surfaces catch and scatter light, animating the gallery with subtle shifts as viewers move around them. In this way, ASSEMBLIES becomes not just a collection of sculptures, but an evolving system, one that mirrors the rhythms of contemporary life, where modularity, collaboration, and constant reconfiguration have become defining conditions of both art and industry.

Through the exhibition, Hadley invites us to reconsider the structures that surround us: how they are built, how they move, and how they might be assembled differently.

Te Uru would like to thank Creative NZ for their support of this exhibition.