From a Forgotten Eon imagines a primordial Earth as home to an ancient civilisation of geological beings, long before plants, animals or humanity. Rather than designing this world as a finished map, Joe uncovers it piece by piece: through sketches, sculptures, fragments of writing and the demands of each new project. Encounters with Wellington’s creative community, from zine fairs and group exhibitions to games and now this first solo show, provide new deadlines and new ways of seeing it. Each format reveals another object, place or fragments of its history.
Most works begin as drawings before being developed through digital sculpting and design, then 3D printed in Joe’s treehouse studio. Digital tools allow him to test unfamiliar ideas, learn new skills and produce forms at a range of scales. From there, the process becomes physical again: surfaces are textured, components assembled, lights installed and every piece weathered and painted by hand. Combining the two allows the same world to exist at several levels, from accessible small replicas to time-intensive, one off sculptures, lamps and interactive works.
Many of these pieces were first designed to live in Joe’s own home. Flickering light, weathered stone, rusted surfaces and warm timber give them a quiet, earthy presence: part artefact, part lamp and part character. Against Wellington’s dark winter evenings, they offer a small pool of warmth and mystery. This exhibition brings that atmosphere into a shared space, inviting each sculpture to feel not only like something uncovered from a lost world, but like an object that might illuminate a quiet corner of your own.
Artist Bio
Joe Harlow grew up in Yorkshire’s Calder Valley, surrounded by steep wooded hills, old stone towns and the mill chimneys left behind by the Industrial Revolution. Many of these structures still rise above the valley, their stone darkened by generations of soot and weather. That landscape of blackened masonry, monumental structures and nature slowly reclaiming industry continues to influence the forms and atmosphere of his work.
After moving to London, Joe began a career creating practical effects, models, creatures and animatronics for film. Over the next fifteen years, he contributed to productions including Edge of Tomorrow, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Star Wars: Rogue One. His work has taken him from workshops and sound stages to film sets around the world, combining sculpture, engineering, performance and storytelling to help imagined characters and places feel physically real.
Now based in the bush above Wellington, Joe works from a small treehouse studio surrounded by native plants and wildlife. His years at Wētā workshop, working within New Zealand’s creative community on productions including The Creator, Alien Romulus and Sunny have encouraged him to begin telling stories of his own. From this studio, he is developing an ancient imagined world populated by geological beings, forgotten civilisations and machines shaped from stone: fragments of a history that might have existed long before our own.
