I always had a camera with me, from childhood and as a teen, as I do now (still lusting after my father’s camera collection, something quite Freudian there). Photography A level was my best subject, and I have some of those photographs on my current studio wall.
It was about being alone and connected. Connected to the world only through my camera. Making sense of who I am/was/am and what the world is, by turning it into a place that I could understand through the lens and by experimenting in the darkroom.
The darkroom, that was a safe place, solitary, dark, and I didn’t follow the rules, nobody told me what was right or wrong, I got to play, I got to make up my own parameters.
With the escape into adulthood, I moved to Paris. It was a definitive time of choices. An unknowable future that could have gone anywhere. Inspired by the lectures at the Sorbonne on art, architecture and music (part of the cour de langue et civilisation francais) The camera, still with me, captured my new world, my home.
Breathing the same air, almost touching heroes, I lived near Annette Messager and Charles Boltanski (just outside the peripherique, in Malakoff, it meant we had a proper house with a bath and an oven, it was luxury to us), I think of shopping in the same market as them, walking the same streets.
Even though it wasn’t them I met so many fascinating people, often themselves far from home, and off on their own journeys of discovery. I was so far away from my little London life. I became engrossed in those utterly French pastimes of politics and philosophy. Life could have gone anywhere.
But I came back home. The jarring understanding of what home means. Paris had felt like home. The place where I was finally me, unmasked and visible to other people. Not the place I had existed for 18 years, which was supposedly “home”
I returned to England to study politics, France never left my heart, I went back, studying in Toulouse as part of my degree, and my thesis was on French politics. I also came to understand identity, my own identity in terms of what, rather than where is home. I am English, then European, I have loved and visited so many other places, but I am not of them.
As a liberal arts graduate the public sector seemed the natural progression. I tried the cut and thrust of politics, I don’t sit well in the world of backstabbing and self promotion, I learnt that quickly, but again the people, who were more like me that I collected from that time, are so dear and good, and make me know what is right in the world. The public sector, council, government departments and the London Underground, that work, the people, had a compelling influence on me. To see the impact of my work on others, the importance of relationships, and how to dissect process and establish priorities. These experiences made me a good project manager, but my power was my calm, my joy, my curious and collaborative nature.
During all that time, I still made art and still needed to be an artist.
I worked in collaboration with other artists, with a slightly irrational jealousy of their formal education. They were incredibly supportive. I joined them in local shows and festivals, I helped instigate an arts festival engaging and showing with local businesses in London., That period was a fundamental part of believing in my own artistic voice.
Then came a new home. Australia.
I finally had the chance to pursue that formal ART education. Studying art in Australia was vital and liberating. I knew the claim that “Australia has no culture,” (I grew up on the soaps, but also have a strong admiration for the production of soaps, the story telling, with speed and quality maintained). What I (not found, because it was already there, no terra nullis) realised was the opposite, a deeply layered, complex, and fascinating cultural scene.
Art school changed my direction. The camera still feels the right place, utterly natural to me, but I found new ways to express my ideas and feelings such as through the different materials and perspectives, and I found my love of philosophy, the basis of everything.
The first year was a new experiment at Sydney College of the Arts, where the students no longer went into their preferred practice stream, but in an effort to both loosen our practice, and help collaboration we had to undertake a term in each studio area.
1st year different ways of speaking, and the impact when I am heard
Using the collaborative methods from project management where being open with other peoples ideas, and making sure mine were heard meant a much greater work than if any of us had worked individually. Favorite memory is making a video in two hour lesson, to an open brief. I made a simple and calm work, that resonated with the tutor, someone who is known and respected because she is one of the finest living artists, I heard her gasp when she saw my work. That hit me, to have that impact ever is fantastic, to touch her in the feels was magnificent.
2nd Year light, return to corner at QAG and the tea cup read Gaston Bachelard
3rd year the Impact of Gaston on the work, and the me-too movement
Verge Gallery experiences
Honours Grenfell but found the chairs, representing women, see that I need to talk of my own identity, and find my language, I am subtle, but approach the work with the mouth open also did the undergarments at that time, talking of hard or disgusting subjects
Clyde and Co award
Blake Prize
In situ continues, the relationship, on the opening night, and with artists passing through the space, a collaboration
Solo show at articulate dividing up the space, these things that separate us are artificial, but unfortunately some are unable to see that and reinforce the wall, scream at me, and tell me I can’t do the show that I have just done, that I do not have the emotional strength to be screamed at, when my belief is that no one should be screamed at, I cannot have that conversation they are so embedded so leave, but leaving is not silence. I still am, and am still working.
Pain for all in covid and negative repercussion, I did more into the landscape, when everyone was retreating into home and seeing their domestic space
Struggle with the art world, as I did politics world, those who are not creative but wear the clothes, and gatekeep? So the art looks at the lonliness, the agoraphobia, posting work on public streets, not working in the art world (can look at maquaries as well, the coked up bankers, being the gatekeeper and giving critique, but holding the work away from public view, literally a bank hoarding the art.
Sarah Woodward 