The 2007 Anne & Gordon Samstag
International Visual Arts Scholarships
Artist: SARAH CROWEST
The joy of beauty
2004
stills from digital video
duration 11 minutes, 11 seconds
performed and directed by Sarah CrowEST
camera: Akira Akira
View the video
© the artist
Snack: an
architectural construction
2006
still from digital video
duration 6 minutes, 19 seconds
performed and directed by Sarah CrowEST
View the video
© the artist
Sarah CrowEST’s video works could be seen as a series of harshly funny parodies of an artist at work, desperate to succeed. She performs most of her sketches as a character she refers to as Bobblehead, who has a large spherical head with big dots for the eyes and mouth. Equipped with mallet, chisel and a long evening dress, she carves facsimiles of her blob-like head from a block of plaster. Bobblehead also sticks a pin into the cuddly rounded forms of her misshapen cartoon anatomy until all the pastel-coloured body fluids have spilled out. The videos’ accompanying vocal sounds, alternately slowed to guttural groans and speeded up to squeaky giggles, could serve as the sound track to either a horror movie or an episode of the Chipmunks.
Bobblehead has an alter ego, the sensibly bewigged and bespectacled Winifred, who embodies the earnestness of experimental art as she conducts her practice dressed in a white lab coat. She is impeccably organised while Bobblehead is impetuously messy. Together they span a range of references culled from TV and magazines: the cult of celebrity, the style of contemporary Japanese manga, scientific experiments, beauty product promotions, cooking demonstrations and extreme makeovers. Using these familiar visual languages CrowEST describes something more obscure: what it feels like to be an artist.
Timothy Morell
from his Samstag catalogue essay;
Loose connections
| Born 1957, London, UK | ||
| 2004 | Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours), University of South Australia, Adelaide | |
| Awards | 2007 | Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship |
| 2005 | Adelaide Critics’ Circle, “Emerging Visual Artist of the Year” Malaysia Airlines/Australia India Council residency at Sanskriti Kendra, New Delhi Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship Helpmann Academy, travel grant |
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| 2004 | University of South Australia Medal for academic achievement Constance Gordon Johnson Sculpture and Installation Prize Arts SA project grant |
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| 2003 | Helpmann Academy, new work grant University of South Australia Medal for academic achievement |
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| Selected Individual Exhibitions | 2006 | Getting Away With It, 24HR ART, Darwin |
| 2005 | Sarah CrowEST! Get Rid of Yourself NOW! Experimental Art
Foundation, Adelaide The Joy of Beauty and Sculpture, Firstdraft, Sydney; and Kings ARI, Melbourne |
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| 2004 | The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even, Bank Gallery, Adelaide | |
| 2003 | Love and dissimulation,
Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Project Space, Adelaide End of Roll Approaching, Downtown Artspace, Adelaide |
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| Selected Group Exhibitions | 2006 | someone shows something to someone, Canberra Contemporary Art
Space Snapshot, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide Taking the Cure, Downtown Artspace, Adelaide |
| 2005 | Unrealised Projects 3, G & A Studios, Sydney Hatched, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art Unwrapped, Earl Lu Gallery, Singapore; Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines; Bangkok National Gallery, Thailand; National Gallery, Kuala Lumpur; and Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria Shimmer, Artspace, Adelaide Festival Centre |
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| 2004 | Pins and Needles, The Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery of Victoria | |
| 2003 | BUILT! ephemeral public art project, Adelaide Festival Centre | |
| Collections
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Art Gallery of South Australia National Gallery of Victoria Ararat Gallery, Victoria Queensland Art Gallery Okayama Prefectural Government, Japan Northern Territory Museum of Arts and Sciences The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney Artbank, Sydney |