I am an artist and filmmaker based in London, working with mediums of drawing, text and moving image to explore issues of body politics, with a focus on the experience of living in a fat femme body. Working within a socio-political context, I use characters, radical softness and raw playfulness to discuss themes of size, vulnerability, queerness, femininity, food and the erotic. My multidisciplinary practice includes first person performance, figurative drawing, and poetry; with artworks exploring, at times, provocative issues such as fatphobia, disordered eating, fetish and body dysmorphia.
I am an Associate Lecturer on Performance: Design and Practice at Central Saint Martins and the founder of MicroActs, London, an ongoing artist film screening series bringing an international selection of shorts to the capital. My research explores the power of subjectivity within art practice and representation of fat bodies in arts and media.
Winning the NOVA Award meant I was able to set up my artist studio following graduating from my Masters the year after. I’ve been able to develop an ongoing studio practice because of that and continue to grow & explore as an artist. It was also invaluable for building my confidence in regards to my creative practice, especially when making works that can be vulnerable or outlandish, it was a sign to follow my instincts.
Reference: SADLER004
Title: Soft Psalms, Kinky Queerdos & The Quarantine Music Zine
Date: 2019–20
Author: Liberty Antonia Sadler
Details: Series of zines created by the artist
Media: Publications
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: I feel liberation when creating zines, especially self-publishing with small print runs. They feel like a space for experimentation and playfulness, to create something authentic and exuberantly ephemeral. I really enjoy collecting zines and artist books too, their accessibility means they can come from the other side of the world to join my little personal library, whether it’s a zine on the history of queer women in the city of Melbourne, Australia or an illustrator in Brazil drawing wonderful contemporary fat ‘pin-ups’. Their tactility is so engaging and there’s so much scope with what you can create. Zines/artist books feel such like a natural complement to my use of sketchbooks and notebooks, which are the central pillar in the structure of my practice.
Reference: SADLER015
Title: Without Shame [Sketches]
Date: 2017
Author: Liberty Antonia Sadler.
Details: An animated self-portrait, celebrating the larger body, reclaiming body autonomy and working through fatphobia and body dysmorphia.
Media: Sketches
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: This short animated film acts as a declaration of body positivity; created through the act of hand drawn animation, a process of the artist drawing herself hundreds of times to achieve acceptance and reconnection with her physical self in a body shaming society.
Reference: SADLER017
Title: The Cinema of Me: The Self & Subjectivity in First Person Documentary Film
Date: 2012
Author: Alisa Lebow
Details: Leading scholars and practitioners of first-person film are brought together in this ground-breaking collection to consider the theoretical, ideological, and aesthetic challenges wrought by this form of filmmaking in its diverse cultural, geographical, and political contexts.
Media: Publication
Credit: books.google.co.uk/The_Cinema_of_Me
Description: A fantastically intimate collection of essays on first person filmmaking. Alisa Lebow’s introduction describes first person films as having the potential to be “poetic, political, prophetic or absurd...(to)’speak’ from the articulated point of view of the filmmaker who readily acknowledges her subjective position”, and this has helped me override some of the understandable hesitations that I know many personal-political artists have: the fear of being vulnerable and visible.
Reference: SADLER016
Title: Studio Wall
Date: 2016-present
Author: Liberty Antonia Sadler
Details: Studio Wall
Media: Photograph
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: Built up since moving into studio, late 2016, photographed in its current stage.
Reference: SADLER018
Title: iPad Pro & iPencil
Date: 2015
Author: Apple Inc.
Details: iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc. iPencil is a line of wireless stylus pen accessories designed and developed by Apple Inc. for use with supported iPad tablets.
Media: Hardware
Credit: wikipedia.org/IPad and wikipedia.org/Apple_Pencil
Description:
Reference: SADLER019
Title: Photoshop
Date:1988
Author: Thomas and John Knoll
Details: Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor, which has become the industry standard not only in raster graphics editing, but in digital art as a whole.
Media: Software
Credit: wikipedia.org/Adobe_Photoshop
Description:
Reference: SADLER020
Title: Pens
Date: NA
Author: NA
Details: Uni-Ball Eye Fine, iPad Pro and pencil 2nd Gen, Drip Ink Pen with Maru Nib
Media: Stationary
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description:
Reference: SADLER007
Title: Notebooks
Date: 2020
Author: Liberty Antonia Sadler
Details: Various handmade notebooks
Media: Stationary
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: The sketchbook and notebook are fundamental methodologies of my art practice. The intimacy of the artist book fascinates me, they’re so personal and raw. During the development of my moving image works, I create sketchbooks that act as project bibles; full of research, drawings, experiments and questions as part of ongoing analysis and discovery.
Reference: SADLER021
Title: Camera
Date: NA
Author: Canon
Details: Canon 5D Mark III
Media: Hardware
Credit: canon.co.uk/5d_mark_iii
Description:
Reference: SADLER008
Title: Sketchbooks
Date: 2019–21
Author: Liberty Antonia Sadler
Details: Various sketchbooks
Media: Sketchbooks
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: The sketchbook and notebook are fundamental methodologies of my art practice. The intimacy of the artist book fascinates me. They’re so personal and raw. During the development of my moving image works, I create sketchbooks that act as project bibles; full of research, drawings, experiments and questions as part of ongoing analysis and discovery.
Reference: SADLER022
Title: The Last of England
Date: 1987
Author: Derek Jarman
Details: Still image from Derek Jarman’s ‘The Last of England’, 1987, the performer (Tilda Swinton) destroys their wedding dress next to flames, filmed on Dungeness Beach (image © BFI)
Media: Image
Credit: wikipedia.org/The_Last_of_England
Description: The works of Derek Jarman have inspired me greatly. His film work, sketchbooks and writing are such a wonderful insight into his way of thinking and his process. From his book ‘Chroma: A Book of Colour - June '93’, a love letter to colour written as he was losing his sight due to AIDS, to the way his sketchbooks had a ritual of being adorned with gold leaf before he begins working, as though they were sacred to him, all tie into the way his artistry & life combined as one. His poem film ‘The Last of England’s non-linear exploration of identity, mythology and national/political emergency screams with rebellion and is still so vibrant and relevant.
Reference: SADLER023
Title: Venus of Willendorf
Date: c. 25,000 BP
Author: Unknown. Image by Jorge Royan
Details: Eesides at Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria
Media: Sculpture
Credit: wikipedia.org/Venus_of_Willendorf
Description: Ancient goddess statues, such as the ‘Venus of Willendorf’, are a huge inspiration to me; these objects are proof of the existence of fat bodies throughout human history, a counterpoint to the dehumanising concept of ‘The Obesity Epidemic’ and the hugely profitable diet industry. These glorious sculptures act as a reminder that bodies have always existed in different shapes and sizes, outside of the societal structures of contemporary beauty standards, fatphobia and eugenics. They are a celebration, and even worship, of fat figures, through art.
Reference: SADLER024
Title: Notes on "Camp"
Date: 1964
Author: Susan Sontag
Details: An essay which considers meanings and connotations of the word "camp"
Media: Publication
Credit: wikipedia.org/Notes_on_Camp
Description: “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a "lamp"; not a woman, but a "woman." To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theatre.”