Sarah Francis

Sarah Francis

Sarah Francis works with sculpture exploring ideas of reality and representation. Fascinated with the uncanny duality of identity, the artist gathers and relocates particular events that were once lost, forgotten or left behind. Francis concentrates on intertwining traces of dreams and memories to create physical landscapes and portraits. This manifests itself through sculptural works that intrude into the exhibition space using both playful and darker aspects that are a catalyst for audience interactions.

Francis’ works centres around her neuro diverse and queer identity building her own language and worlds to explore and understand ‘how I made me’ a reference to an early body of work that investigated her inner trauma and re-articulation of her current self.

Her work has been shortlisted for the Saatchi Gallery’s Art of Giving Prize, selected by Richard Billingham for Curator’s Choice Noise Young Talent 2009, and recognised in Aesthetica’s 100 Best Contemporary Artists in Europe. In addition to her work, Sarah Francis is the Founder and Director of Aire Place Studios, Leeds.

Instagram: @sarahfrancis.art

Image descriptions:

Land Shapes
A layered, framed composition. The main element is a square of light wood with the bottom two thirds painted grey. This is the background for a collage of roughly torn, thin sheets of wood placed horizontally across the lower section of the square. Above is a thick, straight, bright yellow stripe which is a strong contrast to the natural and muted colours of the rest of the picture. The stripe runs vertically from the top of the square, starting just to the right of the halfway point, then ends in the grey section, above the collage. This is mounted on a brown wooden board with a matching wooden frame.

2020
Paint has been spread firmly and roughly on the board. Just above and to the left of the centre there is an almost complete ring of fluorescent pink spray paint. It lies on top of a thick stripe of mainly dark blue paint that goes from the top to almost the bottom of the painting. There are flecks of green, white and yellow paint. A straight pink stripe runs along the entire right edge of the painting, with an uneven dark blue stripe next to it and to the left. Underneath is a painting of what could be a child or young person, with their hands clasped together in a prayer-like position. Much of this figure is obscured, their face and much of the body covered with paint.

Panel 2
Two irregular wood shapes against a bright yellow painted square. They are in the centre, side by side, with lots of space around them and a smaller space between them. It appears that they might fit neatly together – the shape of their nearest sides match, like jigsaw pieces. Their edges are smooth, curved, coming to points in places. However, they look different. The smaller piece on the left is bare wood. The other piece is larger, has been painted or stained and has a white curved section attached at the bottom.

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