ABOUT
SARAH ROBERTS IS FROM A SMALL COASTAL STRIP VILLAGE IN THE EXACT MIDDLE OF WALES, BORNE ONTO AN EDGE, SHE NOW LIVES AND WORKS IN LEEDS and WALES.
'I am as seduced by a 1980’s carpet tile as the vista of a seemingly endless desert
I’m basically interested in our capacity for momentary encounters with the actuality of the world. To me, the exteriors, facades, the visible and visual frontages of buildings and places are a primary point of interest. Once seen, however, the surfaces of things are ripe to be peeled away and poured or smoothed into something unexpectedly reflexive, like some essential recycling of the world’s materials.
Seeing surface is easier in scenarios that seem both within and outside the rhythm or space of the everyday. The theatricality of guidebooks, shop window displays and stage sets; the different rhythm of 1990’s bedrooms in peaches and creams, and the shifting unmapped quality of natural wonders all offer viewpoints from within and onto the world. Eyes prised open, lips sealed shut and a suggestion of touch drawn out by lines of colliding limits and perceived ‘in-betweens.
I capture these surfaces as a palette and use them both as a point of departure into making and as material to make with. There is a repetition of process that results in a collection of singular forms with a notion of plurality. The relation and communications between the components on view is directed by formal tension and agreement, repetition, variation and rhythm.
Subjectivity, thingness, communication, and representation are key areas of investigation in my work, I don’t seek to push viewers towards a particular conclusion, there is no right or wrong way to view things. I want the viewer to be liberated into a present encounter, making their own connections regardless of my own motives for making. If I leave any visual traces of the provenance behind, it hopefully won’t exceed a list of descriptions to be read in no particular order.'
