about
Marlene Sarroff is a Sydney based artist.With a Bachelor of Art Theory from the University of New South Wales Art and Design 1991 - 94 (previously COFA) and Master of Art 2006/7 Sydney College of Art, University of Sydney Her practice extends across several disciplines including 3D Sculpture, wall works, photography, assemblage, painting, and an experimential installation practice. Exhibiting continuously over the past 25 years, with over 20 solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions, both in Australia and Internationally.
REVIEW : “Marlene Sarroff (Australia) makes installations, paintings and sculptures. By rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, Sarroff tries to approach a wide scale of subjects in a multi-layered way, likes to involve the viewer in a way that is sometimes physical and believes in the idea of function following form in a work. Her work urges us to renegotiate installation art as being part of a reactive or - at times - autistic medium, commenting on oppressing themes in our contemporary society. By applying abstraction , she uses references and ideas that are so integrated into the process of the composition of the work, that they may escape those that do not take the time to explore how and why these images haunt you, like a good film, long after you have seen them. Her work doesn’t reference recognisable form. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multi-faceted. With a subtle minimalistic approach, she creates work in which a fascination with the clarity of content and an uncompromising attitude towards conceptual and minimal art can be found. The work is aloof and systematic and a cool and neutral imagery is used.
Her works are a drawn reflection upon the art of installation art itself: thoroughly self referential, yet no less aesthetically pleasing, and therefore deeply inscribed in the history of modernism - made present most palpably in the artist’s exploration of some of the most hallowed of modernist paradigms. Through a radically singular approach that is nevertheless inscribed in the contemporary debate, she creates intense personal moments masterfully created by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles. Her works directly respond to the surrounding environment and uses everyday experiences from the artist as a starting point. Often they are framed instances that would go unnoticed in their original context. With a conceptual approach, she creates with daily, recognisable elements, an unprecedented situation in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of his own perception and has to reconsider his biased position. Her practice provides a useful set of allegorical tools for manoeuvring with a pseudo-minimalist approach in the world of installation art: these meticulously planned works resound and resonate with images culled from the fantastical realm of imagination. Marlene Sarroff currently lives and works in Sydney”
Experimentation is the essential element that drives the work. Using a minimal and reductive aesthetic, abstract ideas merge equally with the materials found from urban industrial environments. Taken out of their original context, and deprived of their original status, the working process is a journey of unpredictability, intuition and impulsive play. The works are reintroduced in a new context. Materials are discovered more than sourced and corrugated cardboard, bubble wrap, rubber, elastic, tape, foam board are some of the materials repurposed. The material dictates the action performed to bring the work into being. Folding, wrapping, winding, stacking, assemblage are some of the processes employed. A key element in the process is to be guided by the persuasiveness of the material and by freeing the “things” by dissociation, estranging them, removing them from their context. Combining readymades within the installation is often employed when the opportuniy arises. The daily process of continuous artistic activity, working on individual series of works as well as opening up possibilities for cross-pollination of mediums and ideas for work on installations and site specific work is of primary importance. An interest in physics and the multiple possibilities that emerge from exploring patterns, random patterning and studying complex systems made of many components is a continuing interest. Marlene Sarroff
Sydney Newtown Studio
Whilst intuitively using found objects and mass produced materials it came actually from this idea of a certain cultural view : everyday life, my surroundings, my environment: almost an ethnological view.By transforming and manipulating industrial/found objects breaks the conventional system of classification and further extends our understanding of it. A key element in my process is to show the unaltered state as far as possible, allowing the material to speak for itself with the aim to challenge pre-existing perceptions of such materials and relate to them on a new level. The connection between materials and individual experience, establishes the notion of a transformative experience.This transformative experience can be a metaphor for the political, where the injustices of society, the ordinariness of lives, whether they be homeless, refugees, citizens struggling with daily life, all is possible for transformation by simple actions of others.
“Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living ”
“The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all”
“You begin with the posibilities of the material”
“Humor is a powerful thing. Play is a powerful thing. As an artist, when I’m sitting on the floor in the studio, I feel like I’m three years old again, playing. Human life—without humor or play or whimsy—would be intolerable.”
“You have to approach something with indifference, as if you had no aesthetic emotion. The choice of readymades is always based on visual indifference and, at the same time, on the total absence of good or bad taste.”