Sarah Larby
“The final sculpture ends up being a manifestation of the action of the material.”
Interview by Charlie Hawksfield
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Where did you study?
I grew up in a small market town in Northumberland, just north of Newcastle. Before going to study a BA in Fine Art with Contemporary Cultural Theory at the University of Leeds. And I was lucky enough to do a year studying abroad at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where I studied traditional sculptural methods such as metal casting and stonework. After graduating in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, I moved between two art studios in Leeds before moving to London in December 2021.
You say your process involves “getting to know a material before stretching, pulling and pushing it's qualities to the extreme.” Do you ever push a material too far? Is there a point beyond the extreme that leads creatively to dead-ends, or is the destruction of a material another artistic possibility?
I would say that behind every piece I make are about two to three ‘failed attempts’. But rather than thinking of them as dead ends, I like to treat them as part of the process of making. Because to know when to stop before a material’s breaking point, you first need to understand where its breaking point lies. The more I get to know a material, the less this experimentation is needed.
On the flip side, a lot of the projects that never see the light of day outside of the studio I use as scrap. So foam offcuts become aggregate for plaster pieces and any silicone scraps I sometimes use for weavings. Sometimes they do just sit dormant in the scrap box and get transported from studio to studio. But I do believe I will someday find a use for all of them.
Recently having started working more with clay, I am finding this more rewarding because you can destroy, dry, recycle, and then reuse clay over and over again so it feels like the material has its own lifecycle.
In an interview with Round Lemon you mentioned an interesting idea, you said that you use “verbs as inspiration.” I can see this in your work. The way I was taught to think of verbs was as “doing words” do you think of your sculptures as a kind of object-form “doing word” or do verbs have a different sort of influence?
I think that the use of verbs in my work is twofold. Firstly for inspiration. I’d been thinking about a lot of this when I came across Richard Serra’s verb list, which is a ‘drawing’ or list of verbs that he calls "actions to relate to oneself, material, place, and process.”. Once I had read this I then started making my own lists of verbs I found interesting (pierce, waver, swarm) to use as inspiration if I ever found myself in a period of creative block.
Secondly, I think of a lot of my sculptures as relations between a material or object and the process or action I have used to make it. A verb can encompass what one of my sculptures is fundamentally about. And the final sculpture ends up being a manifestation of the action of the material. I am also starting to use verbs as the titles for more of my works because it gives more freedom to the viewer for their interpretation. For example, by naming a piece ‘suspension’ instead of ‘rope’ there is less specificity and more meaning that can be applied to the work - giving the viewer the space to make their own assumptions about what the object could be.
In the Process the Salt Dissolved the Slug, 2021
Stacked, 2022
The Wall, 2020
Tipping Point, 2021
I find the idea of using a material’s weight as the force that shapes your sculptures interesting. Is there a time difference between the human-made intention and something natural and slower, dictated by gravity and mass? You also mention a material’s curing time. Are you often thinking about time when you make your work?
Time is a massive part of my work that I want to explore further. Some of my pieces will be made in minutes or some in hours depending on the materials’ curing time. Those with shorter curing times feel more spontaneous and can often have more unexpected, exciting results because your hand is in the work is less. Whereas those with longer curing times can feel more labour-intensive. And the works that I purposefully sculpt can sometimes feel contrived. Which is why I try to have a bit of my own sculptural elements and some process-based elements in every work. A lot of it is a balancing act between allowing the material its own space and time to create a form, and then the time I choose to put in to manipulate or edit it to fit the sculptural qualities I want it to have.
How does your work change when you assemble it in a space? Your installations look really meticulously planned, does the work have more than one life in and out of the studio?
Thinking about the spatial relationship between a work, the gallery, and the viewer has been an integral part of my planning since an experience I had after my degree show.
One of my pieces ‘The Wall (pigeon-proofed)’, was made to be displayed outside as we were in lockdown at the time and I was working from home. This work was then shown in two other spaces, once at ‘Standpoint gallery’ in Newcastle and once at a disused Debenhams in Wandsworth with ‘Bowes Paris Gallery’. In every instance, the work felt completely different. When outside the green of the grass made it a colourful piece; at Standpoint gallery, it was so close to the ceiling it felt big and domineering; and then in the Debenhams, it felt much smaller in size.
Since then I try to match the pieces I make with the space they end up in. Some pieces will also have a different method of installation depending on the space and I really like to integrate the display method with the final piece, so in those instances, the work would appear different outside of the studio environment.
At Rest, 2020 (detail)
Relief, 2021
What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?
I’ve recently just been to Paris and went to a great gallery called the ‘Musée du Quai Branly’, which had a great range of non-European art from Africa, Asia, South and Central America and Oceania. The building itself is designed by architect Jean Nouvel, and is interesting in the fact that is was designed around the collection itself. The building seems to simultaneously make itself a fundamental part of the experience of the work, as much as it sits silently in the background. There are no white walls or harsh lighting but instead natural wooden pillars and curved organic walkways, with artwork placed naturally along the route.
In terms of the specific artwork that was there, It was filled with different forms of textile art, masks, totems, reliefs, and carvings. What interested me about some of these works was that they were made with a purpose in mind. For example, masks are made to be worn, rugs to be used, reliefs to tell a story and totems to be buried in the ground. And because of this the method of display is nearly always integrated into the work. And it is this cross-over that really interests me because art and object are somewhat intertwined.
Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?
I am recently coming to the end of a round of DYCP funding focusing on learning new skills such as welding and ceramics. So I am on the cusp of finishing a new collection of work and have my first ceramic collection ready for its final fire which is very exciting. I am also currently working on a collaborative project, combining performance and sculpture where themes like time, process, and site-specific installation will be explored. And finally, my studio’s Hive, is having open studios in December so please come along!
All images are courtesy of the artist
Date of publication: 03/11/22
