Details
| First Name | Sarah |
| Last Name | Kudirka |
| Username | sarahkudirka |
| Website | |
| Region | Greater Glasgow |
| Disciplines | Drawing, Painting, Photography, Printmaking |
| Themes | Abstract, Environment, Landscape, Political |
Statement
| Statement | You know when you find something in your pocket that you picked up then forgot? Familiar but unknown, your fingers feel around its surfaces, find edges. Not until you pull it out of your pocket and it’s in your hand do you know what it is. Sarah Kudirka’s work is about exploring the shapes and edges of stuff, a bit like that. Kudirka is an artist whose work explores the shapes and edges of things derived from the places we inhabit. Human tales of land and sea, of ancient journeys to the western isles and migration across oceans influence her mesmeric whirlpool, skimming stone, shell-like, seemingly fingerprinted or tree-ringed, soft-edged forms. While Glasgow-based since 2017, she draws on Scotland’s western coasts from Argyll & Bute to childhood memories of Morar. Sarah paints iteratively, pushing through with oils applied and trashed back over months or years, to complete “work that is beautiful, layered and thoughtful”. Overtly handmade, her paintings on linen have an incised, dotted, finely striped, deeply-textured resonant surface. Alongside her larger work she constantly paints over Polaroids and sometimes vinyl records/found objects. Most recent series have focused on bowl:boat motifs and shell-like forms that crowd together, intermingle and make room for each other in apparently limited spaces. Using repeated fine brushstrokes, her semi-abstract forms recall natural and constructed elements – like mapped landscapes and convex/concave vessels for gathering, storing and sharing resources.
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Biography
| Biography | Recent exhibitions: SSA Annuals at Royal Scottish Academy and at the Maclaurin Art Gallery, Dalkeith Palace, Stallan Brand, K U D I R K A, Smithy Gallery, Tatha Gallery, Empire Gallery, The Briggait, Kirkcudbright Galleries, ArtCarBootSale at Tramway/Patricia Fleming. Gallery. Micro-residency at Cove Park, August 2024 Key achievements 2024 Founded K U D I R K A an artist-led ‘sometimes’ space in Glasgow’s West End, curating to date, midsummer shows ‘Find Each Other’ June ’25, ‘Lift Others Up’ June ’24 and ‘to light the shortest day’ a midwinter’s day happening December ’24 2023 “a bowl : a boat” solo exhibition at The Briggait, Glasgow (following group shows in Scotland including Stop.Start 2022 at South Block Project Space with Rowena Comrie SSA). 2020 Presented paper “The Photos by Women You just Won’t See” at the National Trust for Scotland’s Second Morton Symposium on Women and Photography in Scotland, convened online by Glasgow Women’s Library, papers published 2021 in Studies on Photography. 2018 One-month Artist Research Residency at Project Ability & one-day installation 2018-22 SSA Elected Council Member 2010-2017 Charity Trustee and Board member of ACME London 2011-13 Artist Inhouse for Arup (created the role and inaugural post holder), value-add input to design teams on multiple global client projects, devised training modules and was founder – developed from concept to rollout – of The Penguin Pool creative event series (23 unique one-nighters sequentially in 15 cities worldwide, duration 21 months). 1990 The Passey Prize in Art, and other early career awards as Sarah Davenport BA (Hons) Fine Art & MA in Sculpture Studies The University of Leeds, England Pronouns she/her. Partially deaf in both ears, but does not regard herself as a disabled artist. |