Gravity Portal

Sara Maher

Opening: 5.30 pm, Friday 31 January 2025

Exhibition: 1 February – 8 March 2025

Contemporary Art Tasmania

Curated by Kylie Johnson

Gravity Portal is an installation of new work by Sara Maher. Through large ink on paper works, photographs, sculptural elements, time-based lighting and sound, Sara aims to open a zone of subtlety, wherein the material and the immaterial world waver and we will feel like our body is losing gravity.

“Through a studio-based process — of wetting, ink-pooling and staining, and sun-fading large sheets of paper — I am creating surfaces that seemingly defy their materiality as if held in a mysterious levitation. A faint glow spills from these surfaces, redolent of the translucency of a rose, or an atmospheric skyscape. It is as if the works are repositories for an emotional frequency that isn’t stable or fixed, relating to memory. Here, a sense of being hovers in the balance, between past-present and future, between continuity and unsettlement.” Sara Maher, catalogue excerpt from ‘Process’, a conversation between Sara Maher and Kylie Johnson.

“Sara Maher’s installation Gravity Portal… makes us aware of the passage of time: by the very processes involved in the making of her work; the transcendental depth of the compositions; and the placement of objects in the gallery, such as the fireplace, which pays hommage to the original one that has served as a companion in her studio for decades. The objects are mostly like shadows or echoes that trigger memories. Recollections re-emerge, endlessly opening and closing doors in the mind, like falling dominoes though rarely in sequence.” H.R. Hyatt-Johnston, catalogue excerpt from ‘TO INFINITY AND BEYOND’.

“In contrast to the materiality of Maher’s processes, the images that emerge are spectral in nature, suggesting the presence of something more felt than seen, its full meaning ungraspable. Maher’s focus is less on the spectre as a figure, and more on the light spectrum as a field of emergence, a space of diffusion and coalescence where thoughts, memories and ideas move through consciousness.” Eliza Burke, catalogue excerpt from ‘Beneath the surface of things: reflections on time, memory and materiality in Sara Maher’s Gravity Portal’.

Artist bio

Sara Maher grew up on Garigal land in Sydney and moved to Nipaluna/ Hobart in 1997. Sara works in painting, drawing, assemblage and installation. She looks to her material practice as a form of dialogue, wherein the more-than-human world is sentient and responsive.

Sara holds a Diploma of Fine Art from the National Art School, Gadi/Sydney (1995); and a Bachelor of Fine Art (1999) and Master of Fine Art and Design (2005) from the University of Tasmania, Nipaluna/Hobart. Sara has undertaken residencies in remote locations in Lutruwita/Tasmania and nationally that have enabled an immersive engagement with place, including Lunawanna-Alonnah/Bruny Island, through the Bruny20 project, TAS; Warloundigerler/Cradle Mountain, TAS; Wilyakali/Broken Hill, NSW; Milaythina ngayapi-mana/Queenstown, TAS; Leeawulena/Lake St Clair, TAS and Wukaluwikiwayna/Maria Island, TAS. In 2022 she was awarded the Tidal prize, City of Devonport Tasmanian Art Award, TAS. Recent exhibitions include: Chrysalid, Bett Gallery, Nipaluna/Hobart (2023); Ancestral Presence, in collaboration with Luana Towney (Palawa/Wiradjuri artist), CULTIVATE program, connecting Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, LongHouse, Nipaluna/Hobart (2022); In (and out of) the Grey, Bett Gallery, Nipaluna/Hobart (2021); and Un/Touched Wilderness, Devonport Regional Gallery, Paranaple/Devonport (group exhibition) (2021); and Where time folds endlessly, in collaboration with sound artist Nigel Farley, Biennale of Australian Art Festival, Ballaarat/Ballarat, VIC (2018).

Sara Maher is represented by Bett Gallery

Artist website: www.out-of-field.net

Sound: Nigel Farley, Anti-gravitational event, 2024. Duration 11.48 mins. looped

Support structure design and fabrication: Stuart Houghton

Accessibility

The exhibition is mobility accessible. Please contact CAT if you have any accessibility requirements.