Sarah Enright, Love’s Vanitas, 2023. Paper collage on 300gsm cotton rag, framed to conservation standard in chrome bespoke Italian moulding, 52 x 41cm. Courtesy: the artist and Olsen Gallery, Sydney.

Sarah Enright is a multidisciplinary artist working in the expanded field of painting and performance, whose output is often realised with the assistance of unconventional materials, situations, and audiences. Literally, and as a means to structure her performances, collage has come to categorise Enright’s image-making. This affinity for remixing and revision has conjured a new visual language that is uniquely the artist’s own. Her work strikes a union of the real and abstract that probes the uncanny. It is in this way that Enright pays homage to histories of Dada collage and even earlier Rococo ornamentation. Where the former movement strove to represent often disparate ideas at an instant, the latter celebrated highly decorative and serpentine curvature in art, furnishings and architecture.

“These intuitive arrangements embody a theatrical and mythical eroticism. With a meticulous application of human sensibility, the artist acts as a surgeon; each piece is delicately scissor-cut, dismembered from its recognisable origin, then reanimated. Biomorphic forms of sensuous and fluid gestures abandon themselves to a world of make-believe. The works offer up multiple interpretations as their glossy materiality and opulent housing invite the viewer in.” – Artist statement, 2023.

Opening Event: Saturday 29 July, 2 – 4pm.

Follow this artist