Harry Holcombe-James
Harry Holcombe-James is an artist working across kinetic sculpture, light, sound, image and experiential installation.
His practice began with a question: can the sublime be designed? Graduating with Honours in Environmental Design (Furniture) from the University of Tasmania in 2019, Holcombe-James investigated whether digital technology could produce genuine experiences of awe, disorientation and perceptual expansion — experiences that historically arrived unbidden, through landscape, music or chance. That question has anchored his work since, and the practice has become a sustained attempt to chase it.
His works place the viewer inside the work rather than in front of it. Digital systems controlling movement, light, sound and spatial atmosphere construct perceptual fields that the viewer inhabits and completes. The forms are abstract and open enough to resist fixed interpretation, which means each person brings something of their own to what they encounter. The work creates conditions. The meaning is made inside them.
Image making runs alongside this as an integral part of the practice. Where the installations produce intimate experiences that are durational, embodied and difficult to communicate, the images work to extend and translate them — capturing something of the interior quality of those encounters and making it available outside the space and time of the work itself. The two bodies of work inform each other and together form a single sustained inquiry.
SELF, presented at Mona Foma 2021, was an early realisation of this approach. The Sydney Morning Herald described it as “an intense internal confrontation.” Broadsheet noted its “melancholic feeling.” Both responses pointed to something the work consistently produces: an encounter with interior states that daily life rarely makes room for.
PACIFY, presented at Good Grief Studios in 2026, extended this inquiry into new technical and spatial territory. Participants lay inside an enclosed dome while a custom three-axis kinetic system operated overhead alongside slowly shifting light and sound. The experience ran for fifteen minutes. Writing in The Mercury, critic Andrew Harper described the work as “quite singular,” noting that it drew on much older traditions of ritual and perceptual inquiry while using contemporary fabrication and technology to produce something entirely its own. “Pacify is actually astonishing,” he wrote.
Holcombe-James has presented work at Mona Foma, Junction Arts Festival, Good Grief Studios, Sawtooth ARI and Design Tasmania. A 2023 residency at KAI LAB Design Studio, London, deepened his engagement with kinetic systems and electronic fabrication and informed the technical development of subsequent works.
CV
BORN
1994 Born in Launceston, Tasmania
EDUCATION
2017-19 Bachelor of Environmental Design (Furniture) w/ Honours, University of Tasmania
2015-16 Certificate IV Graphic Design, TasTafe
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2026
PACIFY. Good Grief Studios. Hobart, Tasmania. A technologically mediated meditation on a
non-ordinary state of consciousness. Disconnection required.
2024
PACIFY. Town Hall Underground. Presentation of a new body of work PACIFY. Experiential furniture and kinetic sculpture.
2024
SELF: Documentation of SELF. The Henry Jones Art Hotel. Hobart, Tasmania. Image based exhibition exploring representation through a range of techniques including biometric measurements.
2024
Party Mix Good Grief Studios. Hobart, Tasmania. Party Mix brings together some of Harry’s explorations in portraiture, our engagement with technology, and the macabre through a range of media.
2023
SELF Town Hall Underground (Independent Presentation). Hobart, Tasmania. Experiential Installation. An audiovisual rite of self-reflection, and a journey of technologically assisted meditation. Solo travelers only.
2022
SELF LOOP Sawtooth ARI. Launceston, Tasmania. Six images made using the tradition of camera feedback to create an impression of portraits.
2021
SELF MONA FOMA Festival. Launceston, Tasmania. Experiential Installation. An audiovisual rite of self-reflection, and a journey of technologically assisted meditation. Solo travelers only.
2019
Fall With Me Junction Arts Festival. Launceston, Tasmania. Experiential Installation. A curated interaction between viewer, space and environment with social and individual experiences. The work encourages explorations into unknown landscapes within the mind.
2019
Fall With Me Sawtooth ARI. Launceston, Tasmania.
2018
Masters Games Photographic Residency Exhibition Burnie Makers Space. Burnie, Tasmania.
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026
Henry Jones Art Prize – REDBLUE. Hobart, Tasmania.
2025
Brunswick Street Gallery Small Works Prize – Dead Flat Bird. Melbourne, Victoria.
2024
Henry Jones Art Prize – 14 Faces of SELF Seeing With The Same Eyes. Hobart, Tasmania.
2023
Vibrance Group Show – Yellow Field. Hobart, Tasmania.
2022
Henry Jones Art Prize – SELF Blue. Hobart, Tasmania. Awarded Highly Commended.
2019
RACT Portrait Prize – My Dad. Hobart, Tasmania.
2018
RACT Portrait Prize – George. Hobart, Tasmania.
2018
Party In the Paddock Launceston Tasmania. Live visual generation for a DJ set.
2018
MIND/MATTER Design Tasmania. Launceston, Tasmania/. Furniture Design Graduates Exhibition.
SPECIAL EVENTS
2023
SELF Decompression. Town Hall Underground. Hobart, Tasmania. Post SELF experience.
2023
ZZZZ Sequence 001 Simple Complex. Hobart, Tasmania. Experimental Club Night. zzzzsequence.com
2021
Party of Sorts Launceston, Tasmania. Presentation of upcoming work with special guests.
GRANTS/FUNDING
2023
Arts Tasmania – Individuals and Groups. PACIFY. Creation of a new experience. (Lead Artist)
2023
Arts Tasmania – Individuals and Groups. ZZZZ Sequence 001(Artistic Director for Sophie Ambler)
2022
Arts Tasmania – New Works For New Markets. Public lighting new work (Lead Artist)
2022
APAX Bursary Recipient. Funding to attend APAX 2022 as a Tasmanian representative.
2021
Arts Tasmania – Creative Support Small Grants Fund. Bio-Feedback equipment (Lead Artist)
2021
Arts Tasmania – New Works For New Markets. Experience for Digital Distribution (Lead Artist)
2020
Arts Tasmania – Individuals and Groups. SELF – MONA FOMA Presentation (Lead Artist)
2020
Arts Tasmania – Screen Production Fund. SELF – MONA FOMA Presentation (Lead Artist)
RESIDENCIES/WORK SHOPS
2023
Residency at KAI LAB Design Studio (London, UK) Two week long residency exploring kinetic sculpture and electronic art. Assisting with digital design, manufacture and prototyping.
2017
Australian Masters Games Photographic Residency. Burnie, Tasmania. Two weeks capturing the games from the perspective of the volunteers.
MEDIA
2026
Harper, Andrew. “Tickler for the Brain”. Mercury The Sunday Tasmanian The Hobart Australia,
Online, May 16 2026 p88
2024
Harper, Andrew. “Visual Arts: SELF by Harry Holcombe-James Review”, The Mercury, TasWeekend, Online, June 29th 2024. PP 14.
2022
Pridham, Bec. “Sawtooth ARI puts the work of four local artists in the spotlight”, The Examiner, online, March 2022.
2021
Woodhead, Cameron. “What virus? Tasmania shows how much fun a 2021 arts festival can be”, Sydney Morning Herald, online, January 2021.
2021
Teague, Marcus. “Mona Foma Didn’t Just Go Ahead, It Proved a Locals-Only Line-Up Could Be Sublime”, Broadsheet, online, January 2021.
2019
Vinall, Frances. “Guide to Junction Arts Festival 2019”, The Examiner, online, August 2019.
2018
Elliot, Imogen. “Masters Games volunteers celebrated with photo exhibition”, The Advocate, online, April 2019.
2017
Lansdown, Sarah. “Harry Holcombe-James named artist in residence for Australian Master Games”, The Advocate, online, October 2017.