when did you last look up at the sky?
Sarah Kudirka's work is about the shapes and edges of stuff: buildings, cities, objects and words. Her practice has also explored concepts of belonging(s) and landscape history.
Since 2012 she has worked on a major series of paintings/drawings made directly over Polaroids. It comes from a simple but compelling idea, walking city streets and looking up at the sky squeezed in between tall buildings. Sarah takes instant snaps as she walks in urban backstreets (of cities with which she has enduring fascination) then overlays them creating reimagined cityscapes using oil paint and pencil. To date the series comprises 700+ images based on London, Glasgow, Berlin, Hong Kong and Sydney. Sarah ideally presents her small images in large wall-mounted grids, exploiting the appeal of Polaroid format in repetition so they resemble mesmerising urban plans for an imaginary city. Her "beautiful and accessible" and "technically innovative" unpeopled images have analogue appeal, bold colours and cartooned detail with their loosely-drawn lines.
when did you last look up at the sky?
Sarah Kudirka's work is about the shapes and edges of stuff: buildings, cities, objects and words. Her practice has also explored concepts of belonging(s) and landscape history.
Since 2012 she has worked on a major series of paintings/drawings made directly over Polaroids. It comes from a simple but compelling idea, walking city streets and looking up at the sky squeezed in between tall buildings. Sarah takes instant snaps as she walks in urban backstreets (of cities with which she has enduring fascination) then overlays them creating reimagined cityscapes using oil paint and pencil. To date the series comprises 700+ images based on London, Glasgow, Berlin, Hong Kong and Sydney. Sarah ideally presents her small images in large wall-mounted grids, exploiting the appeal of Polaroid format in repetition so they resemble mesmerising urban plans for an imaginary city. Her "beautiful and accessible" and "technically innovative" unpeopled images have analogue appeal, bold colours and cartooned detail with their loosely-drawn lines.
Sarah's bold semi-abstract work is made on canvas, often layered up over years and then scraped and scratched back resulting in Trashed Canvases; and she also makes tiny colour sketches over Instax (instant film) snaps.
The artist has a longstanding affiliation with Arup, the built environment engineering/design firm, latterly as a creative consultant. As inhouse global artist, working with Sir John Sorrell, Sarah developed "The Penguin Pool" from concept to being a successful global events series in 15 major cities worldwide. At Arup she also devised her "Working Without a Brief" visual creativity training for designers.
Sarah is experienced in public-realm art delivery planning and commissioning with clients such as Yorkshire Water and Tideway, developers, architects and local authorities. From 2009 to 2017 Sarah was a charity Board Member/Trustee of ACME Artists Studios in London. She is an elected council member of the Society of Scottish Artists and a member of the Scottish Contemporary Art Network.
While Sarah does not term herself a disabled artist, she is partially-deaf.
NB Until 2012, the artist was known as Sarah K. Davenport. Her degrees and early-career awards were gained under that name.
Born 1968, in England
Qualifications
Sarah is perhaps best known for her artworks in oil and pencil over Polaroids, focusing on cities, but for many years her larger semi-abstract paintings explored the ideas around belonging(s) - that is not just the possessions we own, but how material culture is tied up with our attachment to places and people, to the past, our languages and family traditions. Across all that she does, Sarah focuses on everyday things; peripheral or seemingly inconsequential objects in the background of life happening. Painted words have long figured in Sarah's work as have recurrent furniture motifs.
Sarah Kudirka (under her maiden name, Davenport) won a number of early career awards and has exhibited regularly since 1988. She has works in public, corporate and private collections in Austria, Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Spain, the UK and USA.
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Memberships:
Elected Council Member of the Society of Scottish Artists
Member of Scottish Contemporary Art Network
