Sadie Downing (She / Her)
Someone that I admire once told me that my work is a discovery of myself as an artist and that is something that has stuck with me. Over time, as I have become more comfortable in my practice, my work has become more personal. The work I make shifts from wider political and social themes to my own experiences. The personal is political has become a relevant mantra.
My practice mainly involves performance to camera, perhaps out of comfort, alongside the development of more traditional craft based skills. I am often the subject of my own work, meaning feelings of vanity and self doubt arise. I am interested in looking at the intermediary space between both performance and making.
I am currently exploring my previous relationship to dance and how that has influenced my artistic practice. To begin with, I believed that my relationship to dance and my relationship to art, were two very separate things. Now, it has become clear to me that dance has always been apparent in my artistic practice. My practice has become a way to relive my childhood dreams of becoming a dancer.
The idea of the body also fascinates me and how it can be seen as both the tool and the subject of a piece of work. My body is very regularly both the subject and the tool of my work so it is interesting to see how that alters the interpretation of my work.