SICK Exhibition Leeds University

Sarah Roberts’ new exhibition, SICK (a note from 40 Sandilands Road and other stories), at the University of Leeds

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Sarah Roberts. I'm a Welsh artist who was born in Erruri and now lives and works

00:06in Leeds, here in West Yorkshire. I have just opened this exhibition, Sick, at Stanley and

00:11Audrey Burton Gallery and Sick 2 in the Related Treasures Gallery on the other side of the

00:15Parkinson Court. And we're here at Leeds University where I've been working extensively with the

00:19archives on a six-month residency. It's been an amazing joy to come and look at other people's

00:25stories that are referenced in the archives and amazing materials you can find in there.

00:29It's a resource that is open to the public and I'd encourage anyone from West Yorkshire

00:32to go and have a look at that. It's a free resource as well, which is scarce these days.

00:37Sick, a note from Forte San Leandro and other stories, is a story that directly references

00:43my own individual experience as a young carer and also the universal experience of care

00:48that we all have in the world. It references different spaces within the domestic where

00:54there are moments of hybridity where hospital elements will enter the environment of palliative

00:59care and the domestic and the hospitalised environment have this bleed that creates a

01:03weird disjunction and also this stepping out of time and space that people can experience

01:08as a sick or self-adjacent person. From mild steel and powder coat to glass pieces, ceramics,

01:15it has this culture of excess that comes from a past of familial hoarding, which can also

01:20be something that links intrinsically to this environment of care. I hope that this

01:25work is a joyous processing of shame and grief that can really be associated with care and

01:32those environments of care and shouldn't be. It's a space where you should have moments

01:37of time and space but shouldn't be spaces that become dislocated from the normalcy of

01:42the world or perceived normalcy. So I'm hoping that this space creates for other people a

01:46space as well to have that moment of joyous processing around other stories that they

01:50might bring around care, sickness and grief.