Sarah Contos, The Raven and The Swan

By layering and manipulating sourced objects, personal artefacts and vestiges of popular culture, Contos draws attention to emotional, psychological and theatrical relationships between imagery, form and materiality. Working across sculpture, textiles, painting, video and installation and using a process based/ intuitive approach, her work explores how these interactions trigger intimate experiential responses within a broader collective memory. Often referencing art history, fashion and theatre/cinema- she plays and explores with the duality and ontological nature of ‘things’ with a contemporary and retrospective mindset.

Contos has received numerous prizes, residencies and commissions. Most notably, she was awarded the inaugural Ramsay Art Prize in 2017 for her work Sarah Contos Presents: The Long Kiss Goodbye, which is now part of the Art Gallery of South Australia’s collection. Contos has exhibited at major Australian institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; Australian Experimental Arts Foundation, Adelaide; Carriageworks, Sydney; and Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne.