Vessels; What holds us?’

It is a deceptively simple question at the heart of Vessels, a new solo exhibition by Sydney-based artist Ash Holmes, presented by HAKE HOUSE Gallery from 9 - 24 October 2026. Marking Holmes’ fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, Vessels brings together a new body of works that considers lineage, memory, material and the physical and emotional structures that carry us through life.

For Holmes, a vessel is not simply an object. It can be a body, a home, a relationship, a family history or a story passed from one generation to the next. Across the exhibition, these ideas converge in paintings that explore what we inherit, what we carry and the structures we create to protect ourselves.

Central to the work is Holmes’ relationship to a lineage of female artists within her own family. Creativity becomes a form of inheritance: a way of seeing, making and understanding the world that can move between generations. This personal history is particularly evident in Holmes’ continued engagement with camouflage, a recurring visual language within her practice.

Holmes’ great-grandmother was commissioned to create camouflage swatches during the Second World War. Decades later, Holmes reinterprets this fragment of family history through painting, shifting camouflage beyond its traditional function of concealment. Within Vessels, it becomes a meditation on visibility and protection, and on the ways women have historically adapted themselves to, moved through and occupied the spaces around them.

Material itself becomes a carrier of memory. For a selection of works in Vessels, Holmes incorporates up cycled sailcloth as a painting surface, drawing on her lifelong connection to sailing and the ocean. Weathered, travelled and marked by use, the cloth arrives with a history of its own. Rather than beginning with a blank canvas, Holmes works with a material that has already lived a life, allowing its traces and imperfections to become part of the paintings. The sailcloth becomes a vessel in its own right, carrying histories of movement, place and experience.

Extending the exhibition’s exploration of the objects and structures that hold our everyday lives, Holmes’ paintings will be presented alongside a selection of functional sculptural works by artist Nathan Martin of Saturday Yard Work. The dialogue between painting and sculpture, function and form, introduces another interpretation of the vessel: the everyday object as something designed to contain, support and sustain.

Ultimately, Vessels asks us to consider the structures—visible and invisible—that shape our lives. What do we inherit? What do we carry? What protects us? And, perhaps most importantly, what holds us?