Sarah Ryder MRSS

Sarah Ryder works within abstraction, responding intuitively to colour, mark-making, and the tactile nature of materials. She describes her practice as Temporal Feral Forms: transient, materially responsive, and resistant to fixed categorisation. Using aluminium cooking foil as a democratic and adaptable substrate, she explores ideas of movement, fragility, and transformation, allowing works to visibly evolve over time. Her working-class background and ongoing interest in anarchafeminism inform a practice rooted in autonomy, fluidity, and resistance to dominant systems – grounded in both contemporary discourse and a deep, embodied connection to the ancient lineage of artmaking.

Sarah Ryder* (b. 1978, Wales) lives and works in Colwyn Bay, North Wales. MFA Painting, Slade School of Fine Art, London, 2008; BA in Fine Art Painting at the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside, 2000.

Recent solo exhibitions MULTIFERALS, Exeter Phoenix Gallery, Devon, 2025; Imperceivable (until it isn’t). Isotop Fellesatelier, Bergen, 2024; Feet. Brain. Back Again. Galeri, Caernarfon, with second iteration in Cass Art Gallery, Manchester, both 2022. Recent group exhibitions: FLAT VOLUME, APT Gallery, London, 2025; All Kinds of Hands, The Storey, Lancaster, 2025; Caught In The Act, Royal Society of Sculptors, London, 2024; PLAY: The Movie!, Ty Pawb, Wrexham, 2023; BLINK Room Share 4, Safehouse 1, London, 2023; Maquette, No Show Space, London, 2023; Exeter Contemporary Open, Exeter Phoenix Gallery, Devon, 2022; Yellow Archangel Perceiving Anomalies, General Practice, Lincoln, 2021. 

Recipient of the overall award for Exeter Contemporary Open 2022.

*Exhibited as Sarah Bowker-Jones until 2020