Heriz’s sculptures and drawings are distinguished by figures that appear simultaneously timeless and yet entirely present in the moment. They stand or recline in perfect balance, watching. The gravity of their gaze sometimes finds counterpoint in the levity of a pose or the humour of a creature perched on the head. The figures are often modest in size and with many the fine and precise construction from planes of balsa wood adhered around a wire frame remains perfectly explicit. Despite an animate quality, these figures give an impression of quiet sentience, of absorption rather than response. Looking closely at their watching, we are met with the intensity of their returning gaze.
One day last year, Heriz entered her studio as usual and for the first time as an artist felt ‘hollowed out’. She describes a bleak, empty feeling akin to a writer’s block. For the last months of 2025, Heriz wrote prodigiously, morning and evening, in a feverish working through of long-held humanitarian concerns and exploring all the contradictions of this new world in which we find ourselves. The final essay, An Insistence on Control, is a searing text in its interrogation of human behaviour but which also invites us to imagine how we might together do better.
‘Seeds can be shared and the ground prepared so that one day we might harvest a wiser ‘new’ world should that prove possible’. BH
The works that Heriz made on return to the studio feature male figures, which she describes affectionately as ‘lads’. Some can be traced to recent life-drawing classes at South Quay Gallery. In these works, Heriz extends drawing as anatomical observation to three dimensions, with a compassionate curiosity about the inner lives and challenges facing the young men in her community. These figures have strength and dignity, but also a vulnerability gently conveyed in the attitude of the head or fall of an arm by the hip.
