Sarah Bennett is a practicing artist and has over 35 years of experience in Higher Arts Education in the UK, Europe and the USA  In her art practice she frequently engages an archival/historical lens through which to research institutional sites, systems, codes and mores in order to flip the focus back onto contemporary attitudes and contexts. 

Sarah's  use of materials is always contingent on the research she undertakes in developing an art project, and includes silverpoint drawing, video, sculpture, clay textiles, and photography..  

 

Recent exhibitions include 'Traces' at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park;  'Bummock: the Tennyson Research Centre' at The Collection, Lincoln;  "Materiality: Provisional States' at Hestercombe Gallery, Somerset;, and Safe-keeping (custodia) at the Museo Manicomio di San Servolo, Venice, and the Museo Laboratorio della Mente, Rome. Sarah was awarded doctorate by art practice in 2010.

'Pocketing' refers to the pocket as a site of agency, and a place of desire, given the dearth of pockets found in women's clothing both historically and throughout much of the 20th Century when fashion prioritised the female silhouette over their practical needs - by which time pockets had become a feminist issue. Women wanted pockets designed into their clothing; and in the past women across all levels of society cleverly addressed the lack by stitching and embroidering their own 'tie-on' pockets in which to secrete their personal possessions, or to keep their tools close to hand, or their earnings safe.

 

'Pocketing' is fabricated from dress making patterns, and includes patterns for pockets and gloves taken from my 1950s mother's dressmaking box. .The proximity of hands to pockets prompted the five pieces in which the paper patterns are pinned in unfamiliar relationships, becoming perhaps more sculptural, yet still tangentially referencing women's work and experiences.

Pattern Paper and Greaseproof Paper and Stainless Steel Dressmaking Pins

40x17cm