MUNRO, Sarah, 1970-
Socket (Sculpture)
Sarah Munro completed her Doctorate in Fine
Arts at The University of Auckland’s Elam
School of Fine Arts in 2005 and was the
Frances Hodgkins Fellow at the University of
Otago the following year.
As a multi-media artist, she oscillates in her
work between two and three dimensions and
encompasses several art disciplines including
painting, sculpture, photography and digital
technology. Bought for the University of
Auckland’s Art Collection in 2003, Socket successfully embraces many
of these diverse facets of
Munro’s art practice.
The subject is a painted
portrait of the artist’s
half-brother, yet the
materials and techniques
employed by Munro leave
Socket as an art object that
lies far from the traditional
notion of what constitutes a
portrait. The shaped support
of the work is constructed
from finely shaped blocks of
polyester foam overlaid with
fibreglass that Munro
applies by hand. The surface
is then painstakingly ground
back, puttied and sanded
until it reaches a smooth,
lustrous perfection. The
painted representation of
the subject’s face is applied
to the shaped ground in a
similarly technical but
time-consuming manner
with the assistance of a
digital painting machine.