Skip to main content

Sally Waterman

London
Waterman creates autobiographical photographic and video works that explore memory, place and familial relationships through literary interpretation and the archive.
Contact
Links

Sally Waterman’s interdisciplinary arts practice and research is concerned with the interpretation of literature into an elusive form of self-portraiture, drawing upon writers such as Henry James, Derek Jarman, Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf.

Her practice-based PhD used T.S Eliot’s 1922 poem, ‘The Waste Land’ as a framework to examine her self-representational strategies and adaptation methods, culminating in a collection of photographic and video installations (2005-2010). Waterman re-invents the source material through a fragmentary re-scripting exercise, seeking autobiographical associations with certain images, themes, characters or concepts, enabling the recollection and re-imagining of memory.

Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally since 1996, including Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown, Wales; Pitzhanger Manor House and Gallery, London; Royal West of England Academy, Bristol; CCA, Glasgow; Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Berlin Short Film Festival, Istanbul Experimental Film Festival,Tasmanian International Video Art Festival, International Kansk Video Festival, Russia and the Family Film Project, Porto, Portugal.

Waterman has co-curated artist film programmes, which have also featured her work at ViSiONA festival, Huesca, Spain; Birkbeck cinema, London; Close-Up cinema, London; Richmond American International University, London; and CCA, Glasgow.

Her photographs have featured on book covers for Virago, Random House, Harper Collins and Faber & Faber and her work is held in public collections including The National Art Library at the V&A, London; The School of Art Institute of Chicago and the Yale Center for British Art, New York.

Published academic writing includes ‘Performing Familial Memory in Against’ in Picturing the Family: Media, Narrative, Memory (Bloombury, 2018), ‘Re-imagining the Family Album through Literary Adaptation’ in Global Photographies: Memory–History–Archives (Transcript, 2018) and 'Staging Sermon: Performing Autobiographical Memory Through The Waste Land' in The Handbook of Research on the Relationship Between Autobiographical Memory and Photography (IGI Global, 2023).

She was a visiting fellow at the University of London (2011-2012), where she organised the 'Family Ties: Recollection and Representation' conference, and was a founder member of the Family Ties Network research group. During its ten year activity, the group organised sixteen seminar and study day events across the UK in higher education institutions and galleries and curated two exhibitions at The Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck, London and at University for the Creative Arts, Farnham.

Waterman is currently employed as a part time archive manager for the photographer, Juergen Teller alongside her own practice and research. She is an experienced educator, and has worked in academia for sixteen years at various institutions teaching across photography, fashion photography, film, video art and contextual studies at both undergraduate and postgraduate level at Plymouth College of Art, University of Plymouth, Ravensbourne University and University for the Creative Arts.

 

(I've uploaded works from 2005-present, but for older works from 1996 onwards and for more information on each project, please see www.sallywaterman.com)

 

'I don't wanna be the best...I just wanna dance' (2024)

'Wellow' (2020) Taken from the 'Wellow' project

'Syncopation' (2017) Taken from the 'Twenty' project

'So Cheerio For Now' (2016) Taken from the 'Letters Home' project

'Against' (2014) Taken from the 'Translucence' project

Featured in

Blog

Sally Waterman: Artist of the Month: May 2013

Curated

A House Without Walls

By Asuf Ishaq

Helping Artists Keep Going

Axis is an artist-led charity supporting contemporary visual artists with resources, connection, and visibility.

Become a Member

Join the UK’s Leading Artist Community

Be part of a caring, mutual aid network. Connect with fellow artists and access insurance, space, opportunities, and support to grow your practice.

Become a Member