Sarah Rayner lives and worksin Wootha, Jinibara Country, Sunshine Coast Hinterland Queensland. As an artist, she predominately works sculpturally, creating collections of porcelain objects, underpinned by an interest in plant reproduction and the aesthetics of museology.
Sarah graduated with an honour’s degree from the University of Southern Queensland in 1997 majoring in textiles. She exhibited, tutored and lectured within this field of practice for over 20 years. Over the last six years, Sarah has used porcelain as a medium from which to translate observations of her local environment. Porcelain has fascinating historic and cultural associations to alchemy and desirability which Sarah draws on within her practice making correlations between the precious nature of the material and her subject matter.
Living in bushland and surrounded by flora, Sarah has a close affinity with Australian native plants. She is both informed and inspired by plant’s sheer ingenuity and tenacity, their cyclic metamorphosis and the clever methods they have evolved to attract pollinators and protect their precious seeds. Her particular interest lies in the reproductive organs of plants and the by-products of plant reproduction, fruits and seedpods. Sarah studies these incredible structures examining junctions and joins, form, texture, cracks and crevices, and the way layers peel back to reveal sensuous interiors. Distilling the acts of walking, observing, collecting, scrutinizing, and makings she creates sculptural forms which are simultaneously familiar yet strange.
The fragility and delicate balance of the natural world in the face of human impact are overriding and recurring themes within Sarah’s practice. Sarah has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally and has had public artworks commissioned by the Brisbane City Council in Melbourne Street, West End and the Mater Private Hospital, Springfield Queensland. Her work has been acquired by the Museum of Brisbane, Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery and the Sunshine Coast Regional Gallery and held in many private collections locally and overseas. Sarah is represented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Rushcutters Bay.
