Sarah Drew
About
What is painting? What does it mean to engage in the activity of painting? This honours project, ‘A Silent Sort of Soliloquy’ aims to establish an ontology on painting that acknowledges the greater contemplative potential of viewing the activity of painting from a posthumanist perspective, wherein the surface (as made from and of matter) is paid its due. Rather than recognise the activity of painting as the mere application of paint onto a surface, this project, instead, suggests that the activity of painting is an example of intra-activity. Furthermore, marking the painting phenomenon as an example of a material practice that is performed within the wider ongoings of material configuration and (re)configuration as is true in worldly materiality. Drawing on phenomenological philosophy, ecological discourses and quantum mechanics, this project situates painting as a dance of material, thingly bodies.
‘A Silent Sort of Soliloquy’ then, is an experimental sculptural ‘painting’ installation that imparts this posthumanist, performative, agential, realist perspective on the phenomenology of painting. The installation features three floating, fabric thingly bodies, and four ceramic bodies that are all installed in varying moments of visceral metamorphosis. Together the forms dance in space, they float on phantom winds and vine in and out of the wall in a way that speaks to the agency of the surface fabric thing as a material body involved in the intra-activity of painting. In this sense they become in the space. Now, observe them, open your eyes and become perspectively willing to acknowledge their agency, and listen to them sing their song of being.
Bio
Sarah is a multi-disciplinary, painting artist who lives and works on Gadigal land, Sydney, Australia. Her arts practice draws on painting, and sculptural discourses to explore phenomenological readings of material practices as ‘intra-active’ entanglements, where surfaces and materials are seen to have agency. Trained as a Classical Ballet and contemporary dancer, dance heavily influences not only the theoretical underpinnings of her work, but also the aesthetic components of paintings and sculptures. Her work often features Ballet-esque qualities, and a general interest in exploring imitations of gesture and/or expression.