Art for Relief II

After obtaining her BA in Fashion at Central Saint Martins in 1999, Sara Berman founded and ran her eponymous fashion brand for 15 years. This involvement with clothing and the body led to a visual arts practice that combines painting and textile works.
Berman’s work deals with the spaces we occupy. Corporeal, haptic, cerebal, societal. Space as an extension of self. Clothing, textiles, the domestic interior and the female body provide the platform for an exploration of materiality through painting, weaving, assemblage, collage and drawing.
Berman has had solo shows in London, Hong Kong, LA and New York as well as being included in multiple group shows both in the UK and abroad. Her work is held in a number of private collections and institutions.

A dialogue between painting and textiles. Feeding into each other, joining at the seams, meeting in uncomfortable places. There is a bleed in my work; a contamination. I can attempt a sanitization, a cleaning up of the domestic detritus into a cupboard marked ‘Practice’ but the bleed is the point, the uncomfortable nooks of the female bodily experience. This is the issue. Pass me a tissue so I can clean it all up for you and put something on. Clothing as objects of confinement, of protection, of identity, of safety. Inside. Outside.
Painting is a game of materiality. The visceral qualities of paint. Layered, built up, scraped back and bruised. Emerging from violence of its own making. Searching.
It is important to start any search with a map of the road to nowhere. My map is The Harlequin. An outfit, a costume The perfect disguise. The perfect reveal. It all starts with her. The Harlequin as a Woman is No Joker. She is the Trickster Whore. The Witch, the Shrew, the Sorceress with the voice of a Harpy. Fear her with her big mouth, her bloody gash. But I digress, I transgress. Me and My Big Mouth.