Sally Barker MRSS

 I mainly work in sculpture and installation, but also drawing, printing, video and performance. 

My practise explores issues around power, control and change in two distinct yet connected areas of the environment and feminism. I aim to destabilise, deconstruct and reverse positions of control, strength and dominance.   

My sculpture involves a lot of casting and ceramics. Bras are rolled into clay, cast in plaster, pockets of mens suits are exposed. Using, mis-using and manipulating the traditionally “gendered” forms and materiality of mens business. My work subverts these symbols of patriarchy, for example, joyfully filling the secret chambers of suit trouser pockets with plaster until they resemble full udders. Using a scalpel, suits are paired back to pathetic, isolated elelments. Pockets are planted up with living poisonous plants. 

From reversing and humiliating male aggression, to re-asserting positive symbolic representations of women. "Shebang" involves casting multiple bras which have been stitched together- the result an imposing, statuesque form combining many womens bodies , crowned by bristling, thorny new growth of ceramic buds. "Knives Out", has sharp, aggressive, knife-like ceramic forms, printed with the texture of bras sticking out of a head like form - part Medusa, part cartoon bomb, it clearly says “don’t touch me!” Other work has bras & breasts cast into catapult forms, missile heads, enormous teeth and claws. This is an armoury of female forms.

Other pieces made for outdoor installation, similarly explore dominance, superiority, control and our relationship with the natural world. Using clay to capture feelings of aggression and frustration about our precarious relationship to the natural world."Pernicious" is a collection of white glazed ceramics, “planted” in the ground- ghostly, bone-like, each piece constructed with hundreds of squeezed clay fingerprints. "Squeezed" is a bunch of glazed ceramic forms, hanging in a tree, slippery - visceral looking, formed by squeezing clay in my fist multiple times.  Natural life, human life and death are twisted and connected.