Working on her paintings in her kitchen studio, award-winning artist-curator Sarah Northcott can see two kitchen-themed prints on her living room wall.
One is a kitchen table scene of family life by Adelaide artist Fran Callen; the other is a print called Three Months of Interrupted Work by the late community arts pioneer and founder of the Progressive Art Movement and the Women’s Art Movement Ann Newmarch, who died in early 2022.
Northcott worked closely with Newmarch in January 2020 as curator of her final survey exhibition at Prospect Gallery, later renamed in Newmarch’s honour, and recently wrote an obituary for her for the gallery’s magazine.
“Ann’s kitchen work really resonated with me,” Northcott says.
“It’s items arranged on her kitchen benchtop and she made it when her son was three months old and she would move the cot to the kitchen so she could work, and she would take some photos, move it. Baby cries. Pick up the baby. Put him down. Do some more.
“It was radical when people like Ann Newmarch in the 1970s started making domestic life the subject of serious art and a strong feminist statement.”
Northcott also feels an affinity with Callen, whose art is “sometimes a record of her family’s life centred on the kitchen table and made out of necessity”.
Units with palm trees (acrylic ink and gouache on paper), by Sarah Northcott.
Northcott and her partner Connall have two children: eight-year-old Louis, and Clancy, who will soon be three.
“Has your work changed since you had children?” I ask.
“Absolutely. My easel’s in the kitchen. I’ve started working on a smaller scale with things that I can clean up quickly, when I need to take the kitchen table back.”
She made collages after Louis was born, and when Clancy was barely three months old, COVID arrived.
“We were pretty housebound, so I started making these artworks about kind of being within a five-K radius of the house. Being very focused on the immediate surroundings combined with the new baby made me see my surroundings with different eyes.”
Northcott walks through the local streets with her children. Photo: supplied
Northcott’s work is full of the scenes you might photograph walking in the suburbs with a pram and a child on a break from schooling at home, or more recently, glimpsed fleetingly out of a car window.
“I still do that architectural work. But they’ve been less buildingy lately… it kind of graduated from walking along and taking photos to photos out of the car window.
“It was sort of broadening my horizons,” she laughs.
Having children has also influenced her style of work.
“I guess if you’re trying to do something that’s outside of your lifestyle, it’s not going to [have meaning] and you won’t be able to do it.
“If I wanted to make these big oil paintings where I needed six hours of concentration, I might be able to start something like that, but I’d never be able to finish it.
“You’ve got to do something that you can actually achieve. Realistically. And it means when you do get that time, you have to use it. It’s made me a lot more efficient.”
Footpath and agave (ink, acrylic and gouache on paper), by Sarah Northcott.
One sleepless early morning while breastfeeding Clancy, Northcott saw a documentary that stimulated her award-winning curated show Nature and Consciousness at the Main Gallery during the 2022 SALA Festival.
“It was about the communication between trees when they were in danger. The trees communicated danger by the root system and they are all essentially clones of the mother tree.”
She wrote In the introduction to the exhibition: To imagine that our phenomenological experiences… are not peculiar to humans, or even to dogs – which it is perhaps easier to imagine being than it is a tree or a rock, is a worthwhile thing to do.
Northcott says she was also inspired by a film she watched about space, which made her feel “connected with all the things in the universe but nauseous at the same time”.
“I was so tired, and this was so amazing and terrifying.”
She discussed it with her partner, an ethicist and philosopher who is interested in issues of consciousness and panpsychism, and then approached Main Gallery director Ozlem Yeni about curating a show about consciousness in nature.
As she also wrote in her introductory statement for the show: It is a timely reminder that not only are we not alone, but owing to an interconnection between all things living and non-living in the universe, we and our actions are of consequence in its vastness.
An installation view of Nature and Consciousness, with work by Sue Michael, Sonali Patel, Susan Bruce and Deborah Sleeman. Photo: Elle Dawson-Scott
It is no small thing to commit yourself to a life that depends on trusting your livelihood to your own artistic skills and vision. At a minimum, you need courage and a burning self-belief.
“I always wanted to be an artist,” Northcott says.
In her case, courage and self-confidence was enough to compel her to leave school at the age of 16. She won a scholarship to attend the Adelaide Central School of Art, becoming the youngest student in her class.
She also studied at the Adelaide College of the Arts at Stanley Street in its last year at North Adelaide, and when it moved to the Light Square.
At the end of her art school studies, lecturer Trevor Goulding, who was interested in the philosophy of aesthetics and cultivated it in his students, suggested she should go on to university.
At 20, Northcott began and completed a double honours in philosophy and history at Flinders University. She graduated with a Masters of Curatorial Studies and Studies in Art History from the University of Adelaide in 2013.
Sarah Northcott painting with her baby in a sling.
Now both an artist and a curator, she sometimes has to think: How do I want to deal with this problem?
“As an artist, you want to resolve a visual problem in your own way,” she says.
“In curating, you’re not really looking for a solution; you’re looking at a group of artists to think about an idea and bring those ideas together. These artists – it might resonate with them and we could make these ideas collide with their practice.”
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She likes bringing a group of people together to make new connections – both personally and with the theme.
“It’s like more of an exploration than trying to solve the problem.”
Her success in bringing together artists for Nature and Consciousness at the Main Gallery during this year’s South Australian Living Artists Festival saw Northcott awarded the City of Onkaparinga Contemporary Curator Award. As part of the award, she will be curate an exhibition Sauerbier House art gallery at Port Noarlunga for SALA 2023.
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