Artists statement

I am a multi-discipline contemporary artist with a practice ranging across painting, sculpture, installation, textiles, video and photography. My work often addresses trauma, memory and history, looking at alternative ways to address traditional memorial culture and relationships to place. Materiality and embodied processes are important aspects in my work.

My most recent work features textile installations as a way of interpreting sites. For example, at a former industrial coal loading site located on the cliffs of Sydney Harbour, I buried cotton fabrics in the remnant coal and metal tailings, leaving them to deteriorate and gather mould. I then dyed them using local native plants from the area. These pieces were then sewn and made into a 3m x 3m work, Material Palimpsest, that was suspended in one of the former coal loading tunnels. This process aimed to literally impregnate the fabric with the history of the site, effectively becoming a memorial to place capturing the intangible qualities of the site.
Another work, Once Were Homes, uses a similar process to investigate the industrial history of the area around my current studio. It uses frottage from signage, commemorative plaques, outlines where buildings once stood, and industrial machinery and relics. In this way, traces and absences of former homes, buildings and lives are capture around these areas. This aims to reflect the cycles of habitation, destruction, industrial developments and reclamation.

Short bio

Sylvia is an Sydney-based multi-disciplinary artist and writer whose work addresses trauma, memory and history. Sylvia hold a PhD from Sydney University and have contributed to several peer-reviewed journals, books and conferences. Sylvia has exhibited both nationally and internationally, received various prizes, grants and scholarships and been shortlisted for several national awards.