Sarah Rayner lives and works in 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.
Rayner is informed and inspired by the sheer ingenuity of plant life, its cyclic metamorphoses and the clever methods plants have evolved to attract pollinators and protect their precious seeds. Beginning her creative process outdoors, she walks environs new and known. Attentive to traces of the changing seasons, flashes of colour, delicate smells, and ripening fruit attract her gaze.
Rayner’s particular interest lies in plant reproduction: fruits, flowers, and seedpods; and female organs known as gynoecium. Returning to the studio, she alludes to the histories and practices of Dutch Still Life, natural history, Wunderkammer curiosity cabinets, anatomical studies and slow living when she places gathered flowers in tiny glass jars and arranges foraged fractures across her desk. As seed pods burst and petals unfurl, she studies their incredible structures. Her observations reveal junctures and joins, textures, cracks and crevices as layers peel back to reveal sensuous insides.
Distilling the acts of walking, collecting, arranging, and looking into porcelain, Rayner recreates flora as ghostly white forms. By using porcelain, she alludes to aristocracy and alchemy, femininity and fragility, and draws compelling correlations between her subject matter and form. Porcelain also leaves subtle traces of the self. A partial print or arch of the artist’s hand confirms the haptic process of making and heightens her works’ tactile satin finish.
Mimicking the visual hallmarks of museology, Rayner arranges discrete objects into collections and pins them to the wall. Light licks around their edges, and shadows tell the story of hidden undersides. Here in the gallery, Rayner’s transmutations of flora are both familiar and strange. Cycles of growth and decay stop, colour fades to white, the small and unseen become large. Through her thoughtful transmogrifications, Rayner passes her capacity for wonder onto the audience, compelling us to see the haunting tenacity and delicate balance of the natural world.
Rayner presented her first solo exhibition, Distance of a Whisper at Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert in 2023 after exhibiting Anthologia, a joint exhibition with Sophie Carnell in 2020. Her work has also been exhibited in ReArranged: Act of the Flower, Museum of Brisbane (2023), Sydney Contemporary (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024), Melbourne Art Fair (2023), CERAMIX, Manly Art Gallery (2021). She 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, the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, and the Sunshine Coast Regional Gallery, and is held in many private collections both locally and overseas.
