Sally de Courcy was born in Canterbury, Kent. She obtained a first-class honours degree in fine art at the University of Creative Arts, Farnham. During which time she developed an interest in repetition using the casting process to make large-scale sculptures and installations.
During her Master’s degree, she combined her interest in repetition with past medical experiences when she had worked in a refugee camp. Much of her work stands for those who are dehumanized as a result of atrocities that result from war and terrorism. History, like her work, repeats itself, and the philosophical reasons for this repetition of violence have been a major part of her research and extends her focus on repetition.
She has been greatly influenced by the philosophical texts of Judith Butler and Zizek, together with artists such as Doris Salcedo, Ai Weiwei and Mona Hatoum who transcend their autobiographical experiences to explore global issues today.
More recently her work has reflected on the humanitarian sociological, political, economic and personal effects of the COVID19 pandemic.
Sally casts repeated objects, which relate metaphorically and literally and are hidden within a sculpture or installation. As the viewer interacts with the artwork contextual links are recognized between the objects and her narrative is revealed.
Sally has recently become a member of IAVA, International Association of Visual Artists and has exhibited throughout the UK and internationally. She received a scholarship in Fine Art from the UCA in Farnham and a distinction at Masters. Sally was highly commended in the Redline Annual Awards 2020 for a series of works about human rights. She has recently exhibited at Hello World with the Transcultural Exchange, Boston. During 2 Sept – 2 Oct 2020 she will be exhibiting in the Borders Exhibition, The room Contemporary Art Space, Venice and has several exhibitions planned in London for 2021. Sally lives in Woking where she continues to practise as an artist.
Self-taught or art school?
An interest in social justice led me away from art into a career in medicine. Early in my training, whilst young and working in the developing world, I was exposed to the suffering of refugees from a genocidal regime. These images stayed with me when life and family took me back to the UK and the safety of general practice in Surrey. My own future seemed comfortable until sudden and serious illness catapulted me into retirement at the age of 40. Having been a senior doctor who trained medical students and junior doctors, I started at the beginning again. No longer able to do the job I loved and facing an uncertain future, I turned back to art and to art school. I took an access course at the University of the Creative Arts in 2008. I progressed to a BA in Fine Art before obtaining a Master of Arts with distinction in 2016. I am formally trained in a variety of mediums, including bronze.
The academic training I received over eight challenging years at the University of the Creative Arts, extended and consolidated my practice as a conceptual artist. It allowed me to rebuild myself, piece by piece.
If you could own one work of art what would it be?
Maurizio Cattelan’s Him: origins of evil. Profoundly powerful, disturbing and thought-provoking.
How would you describe your style?
I began by repeatedly casting simple objects and arranging them to create more complex forms, pursuing the well-trodden path of abstract repetition, and the magnifying repetition of imperfection, as a means of representing physical, social, and cultural evolution. An epiphany came at art school when I was challenged to make the abstract more personal, to bring more of myself into the piece. My work is not autobiographical in the figurative sense, but like many artists explores the liminal space between conscious representation and unconscious influence. My work is frequently deliberately decorative but hiding darker and often sinister subjects that when revealed create dissonance. The sum then becomes something that, like an optical puzzle, oscillates between beauty and nightmare. I use repetition to emphasis my ideas and concerns within this overall gestalt.
Is narrative important within your work?
The repeated objects that I cast relate metaphorically and literally and are hidden in the artwork. When viewed, I hope that the contextual links are recognised and re-assembled to reveal a hidden narrative.
Who are your favourite artists and why?
I have been strongly influenced by other artists, notably Doris Salcedo, Ai Weiwei and Mona Hatoum. They have transcended their autobiographical experiences to explore, and comment on, thematic human issues
What or who inspires your art?
I am inspired by my experiences as both observer and participant, as practitioner and patient, most recently as an immunocompromised artist living a shielded existence in relative social isolation. Much of my work revisits my experiences as a witness of human suffering, reinterpreted through a historical and geopolitical lens, informed by my wider reading. Recent authors who have directly inspired me include Butler and Zizek.
Where’s your studio and what’s it like?
My studio is a small shed in my garden. It reflects the messy but repetitive process of casting and often looks like a production line, organised chaos!
Do you have any studio rituals?
Just keep casting over and over.
What are you working on currently?
More recently my work has reflected on the humanitarian sociological, political, economic and personal effects of the COVID19 pandemic. I have just sent a sculpture Beached to the exhibition Borders, The Room Contemporary Art Space, Palazzo Albrizzi- Capello, Venice. Beached is a personal autobiographical response to the recent pandemic and how this new reality of social and economic disorder in a post-pandemic world, has shaped the artist’s life as an immunocompromised artist and medically retired doctor who was shielded during the lockdown.
Beached is part of a body of work, both sculptures and installations that are ironically decorative to reveal the darker aspects of the pandemic and will be exhibited next year in London. They use as a framework both bones and driftwood, both are vestigial remains. Bones feature in much of my work reflecting human mortality and vulnerability. The driftwood symbolises feeling beached/stranded while shielded and like the virus returns in waves. The cast pieces are rendered to look like bone or rendered meat-like to reference the wet market where COVID19 allegedly originated. Contextually linked objects are used in combination. Doll-like faces represent feeling depersonalised by the experience of isolation, the hands the inability to embrace, and the bats the vector of COVID19 invade the works. Bandages bind the works a reference to the artists medical past and mixed identity as a patient. They also allude to Florence Nightingale and the Nightingale hospitals and the hope of eventual healing. The works are surreal reflecting our new unexpected world.
Where can we buy your art?
My work Sneeze 2020 can be purchased as part of the Sentiment Project at the Bickerton -Grace Gallery
Or please contact via my website
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