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Paintings
About Rabbits And Death 2008 |
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The
Book Of Imaginary Being 2008 |
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One
Of AThousand Plateaus 2008 |
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A
Song For Oliver |
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Admiral
Brevity
|
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All
Work & No Play |
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The
Captains Head,2008 Edited 3 |
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He
Knew What He'd Done Was Wrong |
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The
Anunciation Of Nutkin |
Beautiful
Crazy (Paintings about Rabbits and Death) |
| New Work – Artist’s Statement ‘Walter’s Attic’ |
The work collectively called ‘Walter’s Attic’ has its roots in anthropomorphic tendencies that characterised aspects of my imaginative experiences as a child. This sense of childhood wonder collides with darker narrative wanderings and filmic recollections that develop through a more complex adult response to the world. In this sense the animals become metaphors through which to explore memory, fantasy and fear. In the work anthropomorphic animal effigies become re-animated through suggestive narrative and the material ambiguities of the painting. The current imagery in the work draws heavily on photographs of taxidermy – most notably from a book about Walter Potter’s anthropomorphic work. Creatures are extracted from his bizarre Victorian tableaux and reframed in the space of contemporary painting; here they are refigured into different imaginary situations. They might be reading, playing music or smoking. They are always seemingly attempting to communicate something that is at once serious and nonsensical. The re-animation of the animals through the act of painting, using taxidermy as a major source, helps to develop content in the work both in terms of their suggestiveness as images and potential layering of meaning. One possible reading is the presence of death - as a kind of abstraction - and melancholia. These are persistent themes in the work, which for me are totally reconciled with the act of painting. This is not purely because of the historical condition of the medium, but moreover a sense of trying to capture something utterly unattainable; to preserve a sensation. The content of the work attempts to hold a line somewhere between the darker shades of this subject whilst retaining suggestive and playful qualities. As a parallel to the content, the method of the work attempts to combine resonant flashes of the filmic with an unabashed approach to the painterly. Each picture begins with loosely painted depictions of an image which are developed through a process of layering and removing paint, allowing images to emerge from the approximations of the painting. The
concept for the work and the title of my next one person show is
‘Walter’s Attic’. This is intended to speak of
a secret place, mysterious and possibly dangerous, somewhere where
you might expect to find a dusty piece of taxidermy, sitting uncannily
real in the semi-darkness. It also refers to the source of many
of the paintings – being images taken from examples of Walter
Potter’s Victorian anthropomorphic taxidermy tableaux. The
notion of the attic as an interior space alludes to the limitless
possibilities of Walter Potter’s imagination - given the obsessive
and fantastic creations he made and put into the world, in this
context he himself becomes a metaphor for creativity and imagination
- what did he dream about? |
| Biography
and Track Record Sarah has been working in the area of contemporary painting since gaining her First Degree at the University of Derby, 1999. Since then she has completed an MA in painting at Wimbledon School of Art (2001) and a PhD in painting and theory at Loughborough University (2008). Throughout this time Sarah has been developing her profile regionally, nationally and internationally, through one person and group exhibitions. Sarah’s practice is supported by part-time lecturing at the University of Worcester where she holds a tenured post as Senior Lecturer in Fine Art. Sarah’s practice took a sharp turn in focus on completion of her PhD. Her new body of work has already won her prizes from the New Art Exchange in Nottingham and The Attenborough Award in Leicester, both in 2008. Part of the Attenborough Prize award is a show at Leicester City Gallery in August -September, 2009 called ‘Walter’s Attic’. Sarah has also been invited to show 5 new paintings at the Ostrale ‘09 Kunst, Dresden in August 2009. |