#12 Sarah Capel

Collecting fragments: establishing connections between contemporary and historical practice

Sarah Capel is an artist and PhD researcher with an interdisciplinary practice spanning the studio and work with community groups. After completing a masters in early modern religious and social history at the University of Warwick, Sarah applied her research skills in areas of social justice including eight years spent working at the Prison Reform Trust. Prior to embarking on a PhD Sarah worked for a social enterprise leading creative groups for young mothers and women who have experienced domestic abuse. Over this time Sarah developed and maintained an arts practice in textiles and printmaking. Her practice explores themes of memory, identity and dialogue.

For her PhD research Sarah has been exploring a selection of textile and paper fragments discovered in 2020 under attic floorboards at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk that had not been disturbed for hundreds of years. For the AHA research network talk Sarah will be presenting elements from a new body of work she has been making in response to these fragments. Sarah’s approach incorporates a broad consideration of ‘materiality’, which encompasses not just objects but the material world through which individuals understand their social, cultural and spiritual position (Razzall 2021). Her practice enables her to take this further by exploring the potential to broaden this material world over time and establish connections between contemporary and historical practice.

The project is an exploration of notions of collecting and collections, value and usefulness, contexts and interactions, histories and fictions. Sarah intends her work to provoke questions about how we use fragments to tell stories, the value we place on these fragments and how interventions by curators, conservators, archivists and artists affect the way we understand the past.