About Sarah
Sarah Ducker’s creative life has evolved through a number of different media, from theatre direction to documentary film-making, before finding its most eloquent expression in photography.
Originally completing her high school studies in London, she returned to Australia to study film and television at UTS and went on to complete a post graduate degree in theatre directing at NIDA.
A visit to the desert near Broken Hill inspired her first exhibition. The photographs captured small moments of life on the ground and the ephemeral beauty of the natural world, a theme that has become the core motif of her work.
After spending some weeks at the Kenneth Myer Artistic Residency in the New Zealand alps, Sarah presented her second exhibition, “Fragility”, that explored the feeling of earths fragility and exquisite beauty.
Her next exhibition, “Gratitude’ opened in May 2017 at the Barometer Gallery as part of the Head On Festival. Once again, Sarah immersed herself in the fragile abstracted repetitions and expressions of the natural world, this time in sand.
Broken-hearted by the catastrophe of the 2020 bush fires, Sarah travelled into the landscape to photograph “A Testament”, again as part of the Head On Festival. “ A Testament” was selected to represent Australia in the International Prix Pictect and was included in the Prix Pictect anthology of images the following year.
Her latest exhibition Ancient Whispers was photographed travelling down the Hawkesbury river where the weathered rocks spoke to Sarah of our mortality in the face of nature’s of infinite time.
Jean-Pierre Siméon observation that “a poem is where you hear the heartbeat of a stone” is reversed in Sarah’s imagery where visual clarity meets her emotional acuity.
Intent on providing more opportunities for artist’s and others to respond to and be touched by nature, Sarah has established the Arkie Whiteley studios, named for her dearest friend who died in 2001. This exquisitely restored collection of cottages and landscaped gardens sit on the edge of the wild bush at Hill End, four hours north-west of Sydney. Here, literally at the end of the road, artists are encouraged to meditate and reflect on their surrounds and feel the power of nature as an invigorating creative force.
A belief in the power of hope through experiencing and connecting to the natural world is the essential motivation behind offering a space for creativity and restoration.
> Review of the Gratitude show
> Review of the Fragilty show