sarah filmer Hampshire, United Kingdom
sarah is an artist, associate lecturer, researcher and vet, based in southampton, uk.
sarah filmer uses art to reimagine public spaces. a committed collaborator and interventionist, she explores the value of artistic engagement to local communities, often using guerrilla installations to highlight and interrogate challenges of financing community-centric art.
sarah works with the lived experience of a feminist woman. her work received national attention through the ‘ght: a reincarnation project’: raising awareness of female erasure in historical record, sarah invited 700 women into god’s house tower, southampton, to reveal personal histories through performance, photojournalism, and collective art practices, against a back-drop of patriarchal dominance in the narrative of medieval city walls. ‘700 women’, the book, launches in september.
material choice is driven by ideas: yarn features as a connecting thread; still and moving image documents or collects moments; she draws on her veterinary practice to consider human-animal relationships; and engages people in spontaneous temporary public intervention.
examples of work include ‘riverside geese’ (2015), an installation in the trees of her local park, and ‘ribbon people’ (2014), a depiction of 60 passers-by outlined on hoardings surrounding a new arts complex, questioned the relationship between grassroots and institutional art. sarah’s ongoing project ‘knit the walls’ (2016/7) uses knitting as a common thread for weaving personal stories into a city-wide participatory initiative.
Artwork
knit the walls, participatory yarn-based work, 2016-7 ongoing