Thursday 9 October 2014

The Power of Death

My coffin is getting about again!

You are here 2006, coffin built to fit the artist, trestle legs, infinity box.





































My work 'You are here' features on the cover of an anthology of essays about death, The Power of Death, edited by former GHost collaborator Ricarda Vidal and Maria-Jose Blanco.

Read more or order a copy from publisher Berghahn Books here


Friday 26 September 2014

SEeAFAR at Deptford X


SEeAFAR opens at Deptford X TONIGHT!
The exhibition is looking stunning in the fabulous, spacious NUM3ER Space,  Creekside, Deptford, London SE8 4SA
PRIVATE VIEW TONIGHT: Friday 26th September 6-8.30pm 

OPEN FROM 12-6pm on: 27th, 28th September and 1-5th October

This exhibition brings together new work from Foa + Hosea, Carali McCall, Anne Robinson, Sarah Sparkes and Thurle Wright. Using a range of media - drawing, animation, performance to video, light installation, painting and collage - the works engage with living with the constant presence of an absence through the metaphor of waiting for someone to return from sea.

[Invite image 'Jane Conquest Rings the Bell' (detail) Sarah Sparkes, (great grandfather Sparkes' magic lantern slides and mixed media, 2014]


Thursday 18 September 2014

AiRM2014

I'm delighted to be one of the selected artists for AiRM2014 



You can find my new work, 'Blue Seven' at St.  Peter and St. Paul Newchurch. They have the most fabulous coffee morning on Saturdays with a buffet of cake heaven!

AiRM theme this year  is Blue year in honour of the legacy of Derek Jarman, I have made seven blue cloaks/ robes and defined a robing area with blue hangings. Visitors can wear the cloaks as they explore the church.


Wear a blue cloak and cross a blue threshold...

Tweet your #Blue7 photos to @thesarahsparkes and @artromneymarsh

St Peter St Paul Newchurch

Title:  'Blue Seven'

Medium: Installation with blue fabrics, ribbon and silk thread

Artists’s Statement
Ancient religious texts describe the use of blue fabric hangings to delineated a place for a divine presence. For AIRMC2014, Sarah Sparkes has created a blue robing area, containing seven blue cloaks, representing the seven participating churches. You are invited to wear one of the cloaks, shrouding yourself in blue, during your visit.

          Sarah Sparkes is an artist and curator. She runs the visual arts project 'GHost'  She spent three years as Artist in Residence and Research Fellow at the 'Harry Price Library of Magical Literature' and this has informed much of her recent work.   She recently completed commissions for Camberwell Arts and the 'Over Time' project at Enderby Wharf  in Greenwich. Recent exhibitions include Theatrical Dynamics' at Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles; 'Haunted Landscapes' at Falmouth University, Cornwall and 'SEeAFAR' at Folkestone Triennial Fringe, Folkestone and Deptford X, London.





Thursday 11 September 2014

Over Time

I am part of the wonderful Over Time project, curated by Anne Robinson.
The project includes a series of performances, an exhibition, talks and a publication.  

Over Time - Eleven artists respond to Enderby's Wharf, a place where time is revealed in the rising and falling of the tide.  Soon, this liminal space will be lost forever beneath a concrete jetty.  

Go see Enderby's Wharf and the work we have made in response to it, before it's too late.


artists: Rachel Gomme, Ian Thompson, Claudia Firth, Charlie Fox, Sarah Sparkes, The INternational Western Victoria Gray, Katharine Fry and Gavin Maughfling, Jo David and Birgitta Hosea 

Saturday 13th & Sunday 14th September: Thames foreshore around Enderby’s Wharf 11am to 4pm both days  and 7.45-10pm on Saturday
13th/14th WEEKEND DETAILS: CLICK HERE
19th September to 16th October: Old Royal Naval College: Stephen Lawrence Gallery 
Archive Space
Sunday 26th October: National Maritime Museum and Queen’s House, Greenwich

More information: http://overtimeart.org/

Over Time  is a visual arts project about time passing, curated by Anne Robinson. There are ten artists taking part, working across a range of media including painting, film, performance and animation.   Each one will make a response to spending precisely the same fixed amount of ‘clock time‘ in specific stretch of the Thames foreshore around Enderby’s Wharf, during the weeks and months leading into the exhibition/performance period. The work derived from time spent in this historically resonant and atmospheric riverside space will result in a weekend of activities: 13th and 14th September, 2014 and an exhibition at the University of Greenwich 18th September to 16th October There will also be a day of performance and film works at the National Maritime Museum on Sunday 26th October. All of the invited artists are already engaged in some way in working with aspects of temporality, such as perception, elasticity, affect, politics, recording and value.
The space on the foreshore is particularly important to the project because of the richness of the layers of time visible there – the current rapidly changing landscape, the natural markers, the tides and the bend of the river and the industrial heritage and history, including the site where the first underwater telegraph cables were laid. We are also working with local contacts to set up workshops responding directly to this environment in light of imminent changes. The project is being developed in collaboration with Ian Thompson, sound artist based at the University of Greenwich and The Facility Creative Practice as Research group at London Met University. The other confirmed artists are: Rachel Gomme, Ian Thompson, Claudia Firth, Charlie Fox, Sarah Sparkes, The INternational Western Victoria Gray, Katharine Fry and Gavin Maughfling, Jo David and Birgitta Hosea all of whom have outstanding  reputations in their various fields, including performance digital animation, dance and sound and  have been involved in arts projects of international standing. Please use the Contact link above if you have any queries about the project.

Sunday 7 September 2014

Psychic Synopsis at Nunhead Open 2014

Psychic Synopsis: Indexing the Unconscious Mind of Nunhead Library


I'm delighted to be one of the artists commissioned to make work for the legendary Nunhead Open this year.
I have been researching the collection of books and other items at Nunhead Library. 
As 'the Psychic Librarian',  I have created an archive from items which particularly resonated with my unconscious mind, as I let it drift in fluidium of the library catalogue. 
I have created 52 index cards, one for each of the archived items.  

Dear Reader,

You are invited to close your eyes, put out your hands (palm downwards) to feel the vibrations from the cards. One card will resonate more strongly with you than the rest...chose this card...then make a journey to find the book, or other item, that is revealed when you turn the card over.

The Psychic Librarian will be present on Saturday 13th September
and absent on Saturday 20th September

More details here
Psychic Synopsis at Senate House Library here

Sunday 24 August 2014

SEeAFAR at Folkestone Triennial

SEaFAR at folkestone Triennial 2014
Foa + Hosea, Crali McCall, Anne Robinson, Sarah Sparkes, Thurle Wright
At The Old Truckers Lounge, Folkestone Harbour 
over the opening weekend of Folkestone Triennial 2014
29th - 31st August

Taking place in a former waiting room for the Folkestone ferry, SEeAFAR features six artists – Foa + HoseaCarali McCallAnne RobinsonSarah Sparkes,Thurle Wright – whose work manifests absence. Through drawing, painting, installation, performance and moving image, these artworks recall the perspective of generations of women living in a state of unknowing as they wait for news or the return of loved ones from overseas and explore the tensions between anticipation and memory, separation and speculation.

Sarah Sparkes' great grandfather was a Magic Lanternist. Using his decaying lantern slides and combining these with a magicians' optical effects, the artist has created a series of works illuminating the ambiguous relationship between the woman watching on the shore and the spectre of the shipwreck at sea. In ' Jane Conquest rings the Bell' a standard maritime narrative is re-imagined in which a visionary woman looks out from behind the helm of destiny.





Saturday 26 July 2014

SUPERNORMAL 2014

'NEVER AFRAID - The Woods' Sarah Sparkes

SUPERNORMAL
8 - 10 August
Braziers Park, Oxfordshire
Ipsden OX10 6AN

Very excited to have been invited to show some of my NEVER AFRAID paintings at SUPERNORMAL.  You will find them in the study at Braziers House.  Look out for the NEVER AFRAID portal above a threshold too.
Nice preview here from The Quietus
and in Joyzine


SARAH SPARKES: NEVER AFRAID

“In the small village of my ancestors, on the Oxfordshire Downs, a legend past down to me by my mother’s family could hold a clue to the town’s pre-historic past …”
For Supernormal 2014, artist Sarah Sparkes will be exhibiting some of her series of NEVER AFRAID works – primarily the paintings. These paintings represent landscapes as they disintegrate from the suburbs into the rural urban fringes; diminishing along tunnels of treelined lanes into an familiar yet uncanny territory. The subject of many of these paintings is drawn from locations close to Braziers Park as well as from further afield in Oxfordshire and Berkshire.
‘NEVER AFRAID’ is an investigation of the stories, symbols and fragmentary facts that we use to try to communicate with ‘the past’; ‘NEVER AFRAID’ is a challenge made on a threshold before crossing into a symbolic, supernormal space.






Thursday 10 July 2014

The Haunted Sea

I'm showing The Haunted Sea at:
BIG DEAL: Marvelous Mix-ups

Exhbition Runs 11th > 25th July 2014
Open daily from 12pm until 6pm
Private View Thursday, July 10 at 6:00pm - 10:00pm
Loud & Western Building, 59-65 Broughton Road, Fulham SW6 2LE
map
MIX-UPS curated by Vanya BALOGH & Danny POCKETS

Featuring Marvelous ARTISTS :
Pascal ROUSSON > Rebecca SCOTT > Loukas MORLEY
Maria Teresa GAVAZZI > Ashley Scott FITZGERALD
Oko OKO > Roger CLARKE > Maslen & MEHRA
Sarah SPARKES > Mark WOODS > Ihtgw CONTINENT
Steve SMITH > Jude Cowan MONTAGUE & Kety BINKS
Tom ESTES > Toni GALLAGHER > Martin SEXTON
Nadia BALLAN > Flange ZOO > Danny POCKETS
Sarah DOYLE > Phillip Raymond GOODMAN > Lili REN
Spizz ENERGI > Tomaz KRAMBERGER > Raul PINA
Danielle HODSON > Ray GANGE > Paul SAKOILSKY
Emma CROFT > Dermot O BRIEN > Vanya BALOGH
Stephen HALL > Anna NIMAN > Gzillion ARTIST
Jeffrey DISASTRONAUT & SHUBY > Maria ARCEO
Fiona HAINES > Lorenzo BELENGUER > TOBY
Taline TEMIZIAN > Jonas RANSSON > Eva RABOSO
Julian FIRTH > Joanna McCORMICK> Nicholas ARCHER
Hermione ALLSOPP > Duncan PICKSTOCK > Urban XXX
Andrew STYS > Glen Fitzy FITZPATRICK > Fiona WHITTY
Grassy NOEL > Mark RATHMELL > Anita A BRYAN
Martin EVERETT > Jenny GORDON > Joe PACKER
Michael Surrealist WOODS > Stimulus LTD > Karen AY
Oliver CROWTHER > Keira RATHBONE > Dan KNIGHT
Thomas J RIDLEY > Jim ROSEVEARE > Johnny RAVEN
Tessa HOLMES > Tracey MOBERLY > Dylan SHIPTON
Susana SANROMAN > Dallas SEITZ > Jenny POCKLEY
Robert SAMPLE > A Lincoln TABER > Toko YAMAMOTO
Sean WORRALL.........
Info @ 07587454613
weblink
www.deal-big.biz
In Association with VERVE PROPERTIES UK
www.verveproperties.co.uk

Thursday 19 June 2014

Camberwell Arts Festival Commission

SALVATION. SALVATION. SALVATION.
A commission for Camberwell Arts Festival

I have been awarded a commission, by Camberwell Arts, to make a new work as part the celebrations for 20 years of Camberwell Arts Festival.  Twenty commissions have been awarded to artists to make work at venues in Camberwell.  I have been working with the Salvation Army Heritage Centre and have created an installation for their museum and inspired by their collection and archive.


Here's more information:

The Heritage Centre is taking part in the 2014 Camberwell Arts Festival. We will be hosting Sarah Sparkes’ installation ‘SALVATION. SALVATION. SALVATION.’ from Monday 16th June.

Sarah Sparkes has been reseraching the collections and archives at the Salvation army Hereitage centre and has created an instalation in response to these. The work will be on display along side the other exhibits in the Heritage Centre throughout Camberwell Arts Festival from 14th - 22nd June on Mondays – Thursdays from 9.30am – 4.00pm.
William Booth College, Champion Park, London, SE5 8BQ.

DON't MISS OUR SPECIAL EVENT ON 21st JUNE:
On Saturday 21 June the William Booth College and the museum will be open from 2.00pm -5.00pm, the artist will be on hand to discuss her work, and tea & cake will be served.


Sarah Sparkes is an artist and curator. She runs the visual arts and research project ‘GHost’ and has published on and regularly lectures about this subject. She has exhibited widely, both in the UK and internationally, and been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies. She spent three years as Artist in Residence and Research Fellow at the ‘Harry Price Library of Magical Literature’ and this has informed much of her recent work. She currently has an exhibiton in ASC Window Space and is developing work for the ‘Over Time’ project at Enderby Wharf in Greenwich. Recent exhibitions include Theatrical Dynamics’ at Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles; ‘Haunted Landscapes’ at Falmouth University, Cornwall and ‘Lumen’ at St. Clements Old Psychiatric Hospital, Mile End, London.

Thursday 5 June 2014

ASC Window Space



I'm delighted to have been asked to show work in ASC Window Space.
The work can be seen from the street for the next month:

The Host Ghost Presents: Sarah Sparkes
June 6th - July 3rd
ASC Studios
Erlang House
128 Blackfriars Rd
SE1 8EQ


For ASC Window Space, Sarah Sparkes has created a mixed media tableaux constructed from a selection of her recent work. Individually and collectively the works suggest the potential for an extraordinary function or a symbolic narrative origin.
Sarah Sparkes is primarily concerned with concepts of immateriality and how this might be visualised. Her work often interrogates the presence of magic in the domestic and everyday, both as supernatural force and as legerdemain and is an investigation into the belief systems and material symbols we adopt to mediate with the unknowable.

The Host Ghost Presents: Sarah Sparkes' includes:

'NEVER AFRAID – Giant Killer', 2010, mixed media with LED lights.
'The Host Ghost', 2014, mixed media marionette.
'Remember. THE END' 2012, satin, felt, silk and oak.
'Time Machine', 2013, oak, clock movement, infinity box.


Sarah Sparkes is an artist and curator. She runs the visual arts and research project 'GHost' and has published on and regularly lectures about this subject. She has exhibited widely, both in the UK and internationally, and been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies. She spent three years as Artist in Residence and Research Fellow at the 'Harry Price Library of Magical Literature' and this has informed much of her recent work. She is currently working on a commission for Camberwell Arts and is developing work for the 'Over Time' project at Enderby Wharf in Greenwich. Recent exhibitions include Theatrical Dynamics' at Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles; 'Haunted Landscapes' at Falmouth University, Cornwall and 'Lumen' at St. Clements Old Psychiatric Hospital, Mile End, London.






Monday 3 March 2014

Haunted Landscapes

Haunted Landscapes Exhibition and Symposium
'NEVER AFRAID - The Woods', Acrylic and mixed media on wallpaper

I'll be showing some of my NEVER AFRAID paintings and talking at the Haunted Landscapes Symposium and exhibition at Falmouth University, 8th March, 2014.

Haunted Landscapes: Nature, Super-Nature and the Environment, 8 March 2014

One-Day Symposium hosted by Falmouth University and the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, UK and Ireland.

Keynote Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton (Bristol)

From places and spaces haunted by spectres, memory or history to conceptions of landscape as palimpsest, holy wells and ancient sites, literature, art and film have always explored concepts of the supernatural and the landscape and environment. Landscapes can be haunted by echoes and memories of colonization, violence done and irrevocable acts committed. Places may be marked indelibly by the past and by the people who populated and shaped the environment in many different ways. Layers of memory and action can be embedded in the landscape alongside the layering of history in stone. Encounters with the landscape reverberate through the ages and through the rocks, trees, hills and streams that are still present today. Ghosts can shade the atmosphere of a place and some things never leave. The environment bears witness to the super-natural and that which seems paranormal may eventually become a natural part of the environment.
Convenor: Dr. Ruth Heholt (Senior Lecturer in English and Writing, Falmouth)
Co-convenors: Elfréa Lockley (Associate Lecturer in English and Writing, Falmouth); Mark Douglas (Senior Lecturer in Film, Falmouth; Dr. Niamh Downing (Senior Lecturer/Course Co-ordinator in English and Writing, Falmouth)
Curator: Laurence North (Senior Lecturer in Art and Design, Falmouth)
ASLE-UKI Representative: Dr. Adeline Johns-Putra (Reader in English, Surrey & Chair of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment [UK and Ireland])
The symposium will be accompanied by an juried exhibition curated by Laurence North.


Sunday 2 February 2014

CHINESE OPEN: YEAR OF THE HORSE


I let the horses out...
'Crazy Horses' collage and mixed media 2014
Delighted to be showing new work 'Crazy Horses' at the fabulous Chinese Open
A new collage made from wall paper and mixed media, it represents a portal for horse energy to gallop through and into the new year.

CHINESE OPEN: YEAR OF THE HORSE 
Q PARK @ 20 NEWPORT PLACE, LONDON W2 (SOHO, Chinatown)
http://www.q-park.co.uk/parking/london/q-park-chinatown 

In Association with Geoffrey Leong PR & Q PARK & kind support of Leong Legends & Manchurian Legends

Curated by Stimulus Ltd -  Vanya Balog and Cedric Christie

PRIVATE VIEW >>> Sunday 12 noon until 6pm

It will feature new works in all media by over 100 artists!!

Exhibition Runs until 7th February 2014 @ LEVEL -7
for info please call 07587454613


LEVEL -1 + -7