Erin Shirreff: New Work

Sikkema Malloy Jenkins is pleased to present ‘Erin Shirreff: New Work’, a solo exhibition of new photographic works in the back galleries, on view from October 30-December 19, 2026.

Erin Shirreff’s new body of work continues her thinking through object-image translation and how a sense of materiality—our experience of an object—is lost or gained through image. These new cyanotypes and print collages both inspire and rework Shirreff’s sculptural practice. Her collaged prints reimagine her previous sculpture as intangible forms—dissecting and rebuilding them anew—while her cyanotypes inspire new Corten steel sculptures.

Included in the exhibition is a series of collaged archival pigment prints titled ‘Ctlg.’ Constructed of layered photographs of cast components of her own earlier sculptural work, Shirreff creates new, imagined sculptures. Each photograph acts as a building block, simultaneously adding a component to the image and obfuscating the elements underneath. Through layering, Shirreff builds out shapes that can defy and stretch the physical limits that constrain three-dimensional objects. Initially the forms’ structure is plausible, but closer inspection reveals its impossibility—playfully jutting out, folding in on itself, and extending beyond the restrictions of gravity. Shirreff’s assembled sculptures appear both weightless and unmoored, floating on a pale blue background, and solidly grounded.

‘New Work’ also includes a selection of cyanotype photograms, toned to shades of brown, dusty purple, pink, and muted blue. The photograms bear traces of vague, shadowy forms: undulating curves swoop over distinct, sharp lines and dark jagged shadows contrast the bright white of paper untouched by light. Here as in the other works on view, Shirreff creates a kind of two-dimensional sculpture on paper, retaining the depth of an object within the confines of a singular plane.