Biography:
Sarah Duÿshart is a drawing, sound and installation artist who is currently studying her Masters in Sculpture at the Royal College of Arts in London, after being awarded the 2016 Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship by the University of South Australia.
She completed her Honours (First Class) in 2013 at VCA (Victorian College of the Arts - University of Melbourne) after graduating from RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) with Bachelor of Art (Fine Arts) in 2008.
Recent solo exhibitions include Transmit Strange Neighbour Gallery 2014; Drawing Studies 2014 and Shift throughout the VCA Studio Rafters, 2013.
Duÿshart received a 2013 National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Art Award for Shift, Australia Council for the Arts’ 2011 ArtStart Grant, and was selected for the Rome Art Program Drawing Scholarship in collaboration with the New York Studio School, Italy, 2011. Other prizes include Winner of Best of Visual Arts Melbourne Fringe Festival 2009, the Metasenta Drawing Award, 2008 and Kyoto Sculptural Fashion Award, RMIT, 2007.
In conjunction with Metasenta® she participated in Venice Agendas VI with the University of Arts London at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Duyshart also participated in the international Research Project, Moving Cultures that featured exhibitions in Tibet, Guangzhou and Richmond USA.
Previous solo shows include Sift, Counihan Gallery, 2013; Signal Tendere at Place of Asssembly, Melbourne International Arts Festival, 2012; In Medius Res, Melbourne City Square, 2010; The Lure of Echo, Bourke Street Basement, 2009 - funded by the City of Melbourne. Duÿshart exhibited Lift in the Not Fair Melbourne Art Fair in August 2014 and Shift Beneath as part of Future Now 2014 at the Substation Gallery, Newport; 2014, an annual award exhibition of Honours VCA Graduates which later toured to regional galleries throughout Victoria including Warrnambool, Castlemaine and Cowwarr in April 2015.yAs a finalist for the bienniel 2015 Keith & Elisabeth Murdoch Travelling Fellowship, in August 2015, Duyshart exhibited Beam amongst the Fellowship finalists at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Victorian College of Arts (Melbourne University). She then completed the New York Studio School (NYSS) Summer Drawing Marathon, New York, September & October 2015.
Statement:
Articulating the liminal threshold between what we see and don’t see, Duÿshart typically harnesses vibration to generate auditory-spatial meditative installations.
Working site-responsively, her exhibitions have varied from occupying an immense heritage listed dark stone basement, Melbourne’s open City Square, an old wooden telephone cupboard, expansive warehouse rafters, an old post-office and the hidden dusty foundations of Newport’s century old decommissioned electrical Substation.
Her immense works have included hosting two tonne of flour; slowly sifting in response to the vibration of a soundscape she composed from onsite field recordings. A two kilometre line over one hundred pulleys surreptitiously tracked throughout the vast VCA warehouse rafter space, and in April 2014 she installed seven kilometres of resonating, vibrating wires amassed as a horizontal column, passing through the room above head-height, out from one wall and into the other.
A drawing scholarship in Italy heightened Duÿshart’s response to architecture. Her interest in the unseen shifted to include the unassuming spaces of a building; the loft, the stumps, what lies behind the walls.
Rupturing planes and navigating architectural boundaries, Duÿshart’s sonic and vibrating installations, extend her search, originating in her sketches and sound field recordings, to define that which lies hidden and inaccessible.