Class of 2020: Sarah Larby

Sarah Larby

Sarah Larby is a British sculptor who has just completed a Fine Art degree at the University of Leeds, with a year at the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw. Sarah’s practice is driven through working directly with materials, she often starts new works by speculatively exploring a material before pushing the boundaries of what it is traditionally used for. Her treatment of materials differs depending on whether or not she consider them to be animate or inanimate, but there are three questions that she always considers: What it means to follow the material? Does it mean working on the edge of having control? Does it mean accepting that form and content are the same thing?. You can read more about her work on her website.

“Back home in Morpeth, Northumberland, UK.”

— Where are you spending the lockdown?

“Leeds, UK, - where I was completing my last year of university studies.”

— Where, if anywhere, would you rather be?

“My mum’s sewing machine; It’s the one thing that I craved the most when at university and to be able to explore making some work using it now is keeping my interested in another side of my practice.”

— What item in your current studio environment are you most grateful for?

“I tend to wake up later than normal at the moment, so I give myself a steady morning and start making work around 11 or 12, with a break for lunch and back in the “Studio” either before or after dinner.”

— When do you tend to create art?

Sarah Larby, Detail of Bulge, 2019/20, Plaster, Silicone, Nylon, Gravity, Skirting Board, 105 x 15 x 10 cm

Sarah Larby, At Rest, 2019 Plaster, Pigment, Found Object, Weight, Chain 35 x 25 x 10 cm (object)

“I am loving reading Laura White’s blog on tenderfoot, in particular her writing about building a clay wall and seeing how high she can make it just with pure material. It also seems very pertinent right now to build a wall and interact with a material through touch – without being too on the nose. Although I have also always loved Edward Hopper’s paintings and they’re coming back to being so pertinent now, which is interesting.”

— Which artwork is giving you inspiration during this time?

“I have obsessively been listening to Lost by Frank Ocean at the minute.”

— Which song is going to represent the summer of 2020 for you?

“It would have to be Eva Hesse; I am obsessed with her work and out of the selection of artists you have from history I’ve got to say she seems like a nice person to isolate with.”

— Who would you want to self-isolate with, if you could choose any figure from history?

“I was meant to have my degree show this year at the University of Leeds so it’s heart-breaking that this hasn’t gone ahead. If anything, though, it has challenged me to work in different ways and to consider how I am going to be making work at the end of my degree without my normal studio space.
I am working in my garden as my studio space, so it has forced me to consider how to make my work without the support of walls and this has brought about some interesting structures of display.”

— Why might the pandemic have impacted your artistic purpose?

“Yes and no. This is something I keep returning to, and while I think it is important to highlight and respond to current climates within art, I also believe that right now people are using creative arts as an outlet to escape
from quarantine life, so my art has become more of a meditative process. However, these things always come through subconsciously and although I have not consciously made the decision to respond to the quarantine, I find myself building cube like cages, walls and other bound structures.”

— Would you say you feel the need to respond to this quarantine as a subject in your art?

“Reconnecting with everyone that I have spent time apart from, friends, family, my boyfriend, but also the academic staff that I spent four years of my degree with.”

— What are you looking forward to doing once it is over?

Sarah Larby, Detail Shots of Untitled; Sag 2020, Plaster, String, Weight, Gravity

Sarah’s Last Artwork Before Lockdown:

I was working on two pieces before lockdown started and we got shut out of the studios. The first wall based work was an exploration of how gravity and weight would affect the forms that I was making. Using a variety of industrial utility hooks, I wanted to explore their function as a method of artistic display. Then becoming transfixed with the mixture between the industrial red colour of the hooks, against the more neutral coloured organic forms.

The second piece I was working on is the terracotta coloured speared forms you can see leaning against the wall. These shapes were made using fabric moulds and expanding foam, wrapping them around themselves to see how the shape evolved during the expanding curing process. I hadn’t yet finalised a method of display, but I had envisaged making multiple of them all interlinked in a freestanding metal structure.