Sarah Misselbrook Email & Phone Number

I find myself totally immersed in nature, secluded on an olive farm near the rural Catalan town of Riba-Roja d'Ebre, in the Terres de l'Ebre region. I am surrounded by ants and grubs, bee-eaters and wild boars. This place is an amphitheater for experimentation and performance. I begin by walking, running and climbing the hills and rocks, collecting plants and animal bones, while noting the seasons, growth and decay. The fragility of all things is an artistic obsession, with a focus on the circular economy of natural processes. I investigate being in and of a female body, focusing on identity, feminism, strength, power and weakness. The political, social and cultural systems that impose limits on this body with their prescriptions and borders have given way to its connection with the natural world, trees, insects, bones, skulls and rocks. I am an isolated body in a large-scale natural environment, yearning for connection with an audience and questioning whether what I do here is, in fact, heard or seen. With ongoing research into religious and submissive acts within my practice, I play with binary opposites; control and chaos, light and dark, life and death. I use natural and found materials; leaves, rocks, charcoal, earth, always questioning the sustainability of creative practice. Through the use of chocolate, soap, latex, wax, degradable or even edible materials, I attempt to present my obsession with the seductive and repellent nature of human anatomy. I produce monochrome drawings using handmade charcoal from olive wood pruning. I create large scale and site specific installations, using plaster prints of leaves and body parts. Plaster, clinical and white, is juxtaposed against ruined or stained sets of chaotic natural spaces; forest fire sites and cracked and dry soils. Plaster casts break uncontrollably, or are sometimes intentionally destroyed, presenting themselves as part of the creation process, questioning success and failure and reflecting natural chaos. My drawings form a kind of legacy to the lifeless objects that I collect. These drawings are burned to create ash, which is used to make my own paint or to rot my human waste. This space where I work lends itself to live and recorded performance, experimenting with my voice and its echo in the valley. Actions within the build process are recorded; obsessive collecting, tidying, cleaning, burning, drawing, all become part of a performance for the camera. In an attempt to control my surroundings or to make sense of everything, the creative process offers surprising results and connections.

Listed skills include Creative Concept Design, Creative Direction, Graphic Design, Web Design, and 8 others.