Sarah Staton

Description

Sarah Staton's work often engages with the borders between architecture; design and sculpture; form and function; and the ongoing influences of modernism within these disciplines. To explore these boundaries, Staton produces work with an underlying humour.

Staton chose the title Family Group because it sounded like an archetypal title that might be given to a mid-20th century sculpture, thus allowing her to play with modernist tropes which interest her. Through her research, Staton found that 'Family Group' was employed by both Moore and Hepworth in their mid-20th century pieces and she now acknowledges Hepworth's 'Family Group, Earth Red and Yellow' (1953) as an 'accidental ancestor' to this piece.

The variety of materials used for this sculpture - metal, MDF, real wood, wood stains and paint - function for Staton as a reference to the traditional patriarchal family unit. Consequently, the process of creating the work proved to be deeply introspective, as Staton thought a great deal about her own relationship with her partner and children to produce the work. Symbolically and formally, Family Group is a 'motley cru': an apt metaphor for a chaotic juxtaposition of disparate materials that reflect the myriad personalities that form a family.