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.
Her current project is a major series of paintings/drawings made directly onto 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 around the urban backstreets (primarily in cities where she is based or is revisiting) then obliterates them creating vividly reimagined city spaces over the top using oil paint and pencil. To date this ongoing series comprises 400+ individual images based on London, 200+ Glasgow images, 81 Berlin, 56 Hong Kong and a few inspired by Sydney. Worldwide travel has long been a key stimulus for this essentially global artist who spent part of her childhood in East Africa.
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.
Her current project is a major series of paintings/drawings made directly onto 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 around the urban backstreets (primarily in cities where she is based or is revisiting) then obliterates them creating vividly reimagined city spaces over the top using oil paint and pencil. To date this ongoing series comprises 400+ individual images based on London, 200+ Glasgow images, 81 Berlin, 56 Hong Kong and a few inspired by Sydney. Worldwide travel has long been a key stimulus for this essentially global artist who spent part of her childhood in East Africa.
Sarah presents her small images in large wall-mounted grids, exploiting the appeal of repetition so they resemble a mesmerising urban plan of an imaginary city. Her "beautiful and accessible" and "technically innovative" images fascinate the eye with analogue appeal, colour and loosely-drawn lines.
The artist has a longstanding affiliation with Arup, the built environment engineering/design firm, latterly as a creative consultant. As their inhouse global artist, working with Sir John Sorrell (founder of London Design Festival), Sarah developed "The Penguin Pool" from concept to being a successful global events series in 15 major cities worldwide. At Arup she also developed 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 now 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 early-career awards were gained under her maiden name.
Born 1968, in England
Qualifications
Sarah is now best recognised 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
