Sara Barker

Sara Barker employs painted aluminum sheets, molded brass, and steel brazing, as well as commonplace materials like wood, cardboard, and wire to create three-dimensional sculptural paintings. Drawing on her background in painting, Barker treats metal sheets as a canvas to explore the limits of painted surfaces beyond cavases. By integrating gestural painting into her works, she creates a contrast with industrial forms, resulting in large scale, self-supporting sculptures and wall hangings that engage with composition, scale, and materiality in nuanced ways. Barker has included angular aluminum trays, or ‘trenches,’ as vessels for painting, which are fundamental and adaptable structures that can accommodate diverse forms, depths, configurations, and shapes. Her work highlights a shared language between painting and sculpture that is visceral, tangible, and fundamental to the act of creation, and these pieces create small, self-contained abstract landscapes composed of linear metal shapes. ...

The Approach is co-directed by Jake Miller and Emma Robertson. Located in Bethnal Green above The Approach Tavern, for over twenty years it has operated an internationally recognised programme from its East London base. The gallery is known for discovering artists and establishing their careers as well as making inter-generational curated group shows a strong focus. The list of represented artists includes the Estates of important overlooked female artists Heidi Bucher and Maria Pinińska Bereś, as well as seminal British collage artist John Stezaker, together with established and emerging artists including Magali Reus, Peter Davies, Lisa Oppenheim, Sandra Mujinga, Pam Evelyn, Sara Cwynar, Sam Windett and Caitlin Keogh. Over the years the gallery has operated parallel programmes in additional gallery spaces in London’s West End (The Approach W1) and in Shoreditch (The Reliance). The gallery is currently based solely in its original East End location and continues to expand its programme, showcasing its represented artists in the main gallery space, and both represented and non-represented artists in The Annexe, a smaller, more experimental space at the back of the building. ...