Sally Ward

I live and work in Kent. I graduated from Norwich School of Art and then completed an Advanced Sculpture Course at St Martins College of Art in London. After leaving St Martins I shared a studio with Katherine Gili and worked part time as her assistant. I spent many years working with Community Art projects in Lewisham and running workshops in the Tate Galleries, the British Museum and Museum of London. Whilst working in Tate Modern my design was used to create an Under 5s Children’s Area.

I have exhibited widely and recent exhibitions include The Royal West of England 170 Open Exhibition 2023 in Bristol and The Royal Cambrian Academy Open Exhibition 2022/3 in Conwy. I exhibit regularly with the FPS (The Free Painters and Sculptors) and ArtCan. Recently I have shown sculptures in the Flux Exhibition in London and a work in The Himalayan Garden and Sculpture Park in Ripon, North Yorkshire. In October 24 I exhibited works with ArtCan in The Department Store in Brixton. This year I have shown work in the ArtCan Hub in Angel Centre, Islington, with the FPS in The Muse in Portobello Road and had a sculpture selected for The Chelsea Art Summer Show.

My practice as a mixed media sculptor is rooted in experimentation, transformation, and process. I work with a wide range of materials, both natural and repurposed, allowing them to guide the evolution of each piece. Recycled paper, for instance, is pulped, bound with eco-friendly glue, and infused with elements like sand before being hardened, waxed, and shaped. Through cutting, filing, or polishing, this once-fragile material takes on the strength and character of stone.

Found objects often enter the work, merging with the sculptural forms in unexpected ways. The process of addition and subtraction, building up, breaking down, and refining, mirrors the slow erosions and accumulations found in nature. Much like pebbles smoothed by tides or shells shaped by the sea, my sculptures embody a dialogue between time, transformation, and material resilience.

Recently, I have been exploring textiles as sculptural material, drawing inspiration from scaffold netting used around buildings and metallic mesh designed for garden protection. These industrial, practical materials take on new qualities when repurposed, creating lightness, rhythm, and a sense of movement as they catch and reflect light. With these works, often inspired by the sea, I aim to capture its shifting essence and ever-changing aspects, evoking the play of surface and depth, calm and turbulence.

I approach each piece without a fixed outcome. An initial idea becomes only a starting point, inevitably shifting as forms and materials interact. Through this process-led practice, cohesion emerges not from control, but from allowing materials to reveal their own potential. My sculptures, abstract yet rooted in natural rhythms, seek to embody the tension and harmony between the organic and the man made, permanence and impermanence.