Artist’s Statement
Sarah Cliff is an artist and curator whose practice spans printmaking, drawing, and installation, bringing together images, objects, and research-led narratives. Working across these disciplines, she orchestrates visual experiences that move between the intimate and the substantial, the archival and the imagined. Her work engages with the subtleties of humour, irony, and the darker undercurrents embedded within history, domesticity, and the corporeal.
An interest in the arrangement of objects, images, and ideas has led Cliff into curatorial roles, shaping exhibition concepts and acting as narrator as well as artist. At Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Gallery she has curated solo and group projects including Draw and Bite (monotone etchings), Treen (of a tree) (responses to museum objects), and Domestic Pleasures (postmodernism), which brought together three lead artists alongside an open call from the Fine Art Professional Development group at The Bridge School. She will curate an exhibition for the Free Painters and Sculptors group in March 2026.
Her year-long residency at Ochre Print Studio in 2018 consolidated her teaching practice; she has since taught photo-etching and life-model printing, delivered etching and screen-printing on the MFA programme at West Dean College, and currently leads community workshops at Kaleidoscope Gallery.
Education
- Master of Fine Art (Distinction), West Dean College, accredited University of Sussex; Vice-Chancellor’s Award, 2017
- BA (Hons) Cultural Studies, University of Portsmouth
- Dip LCM, Music Theatre
Exhibitions and Awards
- 2026 – Free Painters and Sculptors, curator, Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Gallery
- 2025 – Domestic Pleasures, curator, Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Gallery
- 2025 – Treen, Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Gallery
- 2025 – Loaded Colour, Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Gallery
- 2024 – Draw and Bite, curator / exhibitor, Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Gallery
- 2024–25 – Adam’s Gallery, Reigate
- 2023, 2020, 2019, 2018 – Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair
- 2023 – Do You Buy This?, Ugly Duck, London
- 2023 – Doll, The House of Smalls
- 2021 – The Open Dresser, solo exhibition
- 2020 – From Darkness, curator, Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Gallery
- 2020 – The Wraiths of Golgonooza (with Jill Laudet), No Format Gallery, Deptford
- 2019 – The Ballad of Gibbet Hill, solo exhibition / residency, Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Gallery
- 2019 – Watts Gallery, Artist’s Talk, “The Museum Object”
- 2019 – West Dean College, Alumni Artist’s Talk
- 2018 – Ochre Print Studio, Artist in Residence
- 2018 – Purcell Paper Award
- 2018 – Printmakers Council Award
- 2018 – Watts Gallery, Printmaker’s Talk and Workshop
- 2018 – GetitArts, 5th Base Gallery, London
- 2017 – Artworks 2017, Barbican Arts Group Trust
Sarah Cliff 