Material Matters: Curator’s tour and Talk
Date: Saturday 27th April 2pm
Location: elysium gallery, 210 High St, Swansea, SA1 1PE
Join curator and sculptor Sarah Tombs on a tour of Material Matters, looking closely at ways in which sculpture conveys its meaning through the physicality of matter.
There will be live demonstrations of working processes.
Material Matters explores the relationship of process and materiality, how through experimentation and manipulation the sculptor is able to generate sculptural objects whose content and motivations are accessible to an audience.
Sarah Tombs is a sculptor living and working in Wales and London.
After graduating from the Royal college of Art in 1987 Sarah established her sculptural practice in London producing public sculpture. Alongside her commissioned public sculpture she has participated in exhibitions nationally and internationally. Her work is held in many private, corporate and public collections including the Government Art Collection, Hammersmith Hospital, Abertawe Bro Morgannwg Health Trust, the National Botanic Garden of Wales, Christies UK, and Linklaters UK.
From 2011 to 2015 Sarah was chair of Sculpture Cymru leading and participating in projects such as Castell: Sculpture at Kidwelly Castle. In 2015 she led the Sculpture Cymru/ collaboration: Barcode Sculpture Project at the National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW), working with their science team to curate a sculpture trail in the Garden. In 2016-2017 Sarah was principal artist an major Arts and Humanities Research Council funded art/science project Cross-Pollination: Revaluing Pollinators through Art and Science which brought artists and scientists together to find creative ways to influence policy-making decisions for pollinator conservation. An international conference and exhibitions were held at NBGW, the Bug Farm and SCA. As an extension of this project Sarah was an invited artist in residence at Cornell University and organised and co-curated an exhibition held at the Mann Gallery, Cornell University, NY in 2019.
Since 1993 Sarah combined her sculpture practice with teaching in HE, including Keele university, Stafford College, Swansea College of Art and Coleg Sir Gar. She is a freelance gallery artist and lecturer at the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection, London.
Sarah held the post of senior lecturer in Fine Art and Contextual Studies at Swansea College of Art (SCA) until 2019, and is currently an honorary Research Fellow at SCA.
Image: Andrew Sabin
