Clara Hali Talus torso

Talus torso is at once an assemblage of boulder-like forms and a figure rising out of chaos. It is inspired by the sandstone that crumbles off escarpments in the Blue Mountains where Clara Hali lives, accumulating in the valleys below to form what is called a talus.

Hali finds a rich vein of metaphor in ancient rock that resisted gravity for millennia and then suddenly yielded to it. Strength and fragility are qualities she responds to in her work as a sculptor, but she also sees them as fundamental to the human condition.

‘Part of the reason that I am doing the work that I do is to communicate my experience as a common experience: a shared quest for finding balance and stability within our lives,’ says Hali, second-time finalist in the Wynne.