MAPA Art and Architecture. An art and architecture collaborative working between the social and the spatial.


︎   ︎    ︎   

Hugo Moline and Heidi Axelsen have been making work together since 2008. Together they make site-specific devices, discursive machines and social infrastructures. The form their work takes depends on its context, and has so far included: personalised vehicles, adaptable shelters, handmade maps, a galvanised-steel park shelter that can predict the weather and more. These lean devices actively engage people to question, understand and act upon the built and social structures which frame our lives.

Recent exhibitions include Owner Occupy, (2015) Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and 2000 Waraji 200 Feet (2015), Echigo Tsumari Art Triennial. Permanent public artworks include Naval Stores (2014) in Ermington, and The Observatory (2012) in Cabarita. Recent awards for Heidi & Hugo's work include The Sainsbury Sculpture Prize (2014), Asa Masakusa Award, Tokyo (2013) and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant (2008). They have created work for exhibitions such as Shelter Union (2015), UNSW Galleries (2015), Sydney, and Crisis Complex (2012) and The Right to the City, (2011), both at Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney. They have been artists-in-residence at Australia House, Niigata, Japan; Silpakorn University, Bangkok; Schumacher College, Totnes, United Kingdom and the University of Tasmania, Cradle Coast Campus, Burnie.

Prior to their collaboration, Moline trained as an architect and has worked on housing and public space projects for communities in Western Sydney, Bangkok, Manila, and Suva and Lautoka in Fiji. Moline was awarded the Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship and the Dunlop Asia Fellowship in 2006. Axelsen trained in sculpture and installation and has worked across a range of mediums in both galleries and public spaces, in Sydney and abroad. She has also worked on numerous community cultural development projects in Western Sydney.

Heidi and Hugo  are the directors of MAPA Art & Architecture and are part of The Lot collective.

Photograph by Ona Janzen