Professor Sarah Casey
Professor in Fine Art and its HistoriesMy Role
I am a visual artist and researcher, Co-Director of the Practices Research Centre in Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA). My research concerns drawing as a tool for interdiscipinary dialogue. In addition to my research and teaching at Lancaster, I am LICA Undergraduate Director representing all LICA undergraduate programmes at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
Research Interests
My research is practice based, undertaken primarily through studio work. An ongoing concern is in probing the complex cultural, social, material and visual value of delicacy to find ways to analyse, interpret and represent the fugitive or visually elusive. On a formal level, this practice is typically characterised by a cross-fertilization of spatial and sculptural languages, processes and materials with those of drawing. In 2021 I was awarded a visiting research fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute to develop a new project 'Emergency!' provoked the material tensions of presence and absence assocated with glacial archaeology. I am currently developing this further in dialogue with Valais Musuems, Sion Switzerland, where I was artist in residence at the Musee d'Art du Valais, in 2023.
For several years I have been investigating hybrid approaches to drawing, informed by collaborations with medics, archaeologists and conservators which explore commonalties between approaches in drawing and those in professions that must cope with the delicate or fugitive in their routine practice. I am particlarly interested in what the analytical tools of Art might share with invesigative procedure in these Sciences.
Alongside my practice as an artist I also write on this topic. In 2020 I co authored the book 'Drawing Investigations in Science Culture and Environment' ( Bloomsbury 2020) with another Lancaster University colleague Gerry Davies.
My practice-based research and the development of artworks is grounded in fieldwork/ site visits and has seen me working in collaboration with scientists and other professionals on sites from Hadrian's Wall to Kensington Palace. For example, from 2014-16 I worked with cosmologist Kostas Dimopoulos and anthropolgist Rebecca Ellis on the project ' Dark Matters which examines the different ways we work with entities that are 'imperceptible'. Other recent projects include: Exquistite Corpses a collaboration with Canadian author, curator and reseracher Dr Ingrid Mida at Ryerson University Toronto; Common Grounds, a collaboration with The Bowes Museum to use drawing to catalogue a series of 54 lace caps that had lain unexamined in carriage trunks for over 70 years; and Hidden Drawers, a catalogue publication and solo exhibitionat Kensington Palace which explored themes of attraction, intimacy and revelation in relation to historical traditions in drawing and values in contermporary fine art drawing practice.
Explicit aims underpinning this work are: identifying shared practice around mutual concerns with 'delicacy'; developing new studio methods; and generating forms of documentation that facilitate understanding of studio methodologies to establish a transferable model for cross-discipline knowledge exchange.
Current Teaching
My specialism is drawing, particlarly drawing as an object where it shares characteristics with sculture and installation. I teach drawing sculpture and installation to on all core modules of our Fine Art degrees. I also supervise the studio practice of postgraduates in Fine Art working working across drawing and sculpture. I am keen to supervise students with interests in drawing and materiality or those interested in relationshops between art and science.
IAA - AHRC Impact Acceleration Account
01/04/2022 → 31/03/2026
Research
Rocky Climates
01/06/2021 → …
Research
Emergency!
01/01/2020 → …
Research
Drawn from the Ground: Discovering Graphite and its Secrets
01/08/2019 → 31/12/2019
Research
Life Lines: The Art of Looking Good
16/11/2018 → 24/11/2018
Research
Ruskin's Good Looking!:
01/12/2017 → 30/04/2019
Research
Exquisite Corpse
01/01/2017 → 31/12/2019
Research
Common Grounds
01/10/2013 → 01/07/2015
Other
Waking The Line: Drawing in Other Terrains
01/04/2013 → 17/01/2020
Research
Exhibitors Gallery Tour & Talk
Invited talk
Visiting Artist Talk : Drawing out the Delicate
Invited talk
Tuesday Talk: Sarah Casey
Invited talk
Artist in residence Musee d'Art du Valais
Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition
Emergency Book Launch
Invited talk
Excavating the Past - Drawing on Archaeology
Invited talk
Wintering Well with Sarah Casey
Invited talk
Drawn from Ice: a conversation between art and alpine archaeology
Invited talk
From Ice & Water: Drawing in Precarious Environments
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Drawing Session with Sarah Casey
Invited talk
Girl Friday: Sarah Casey
Invited talk
Rock Up!
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
On Common Grounds - Drawing Lace
Invited talk
Drawing: Inhabiting the past, sensing the future
Invited talk
TRACEY (Journal)
Editorial activity
RUUKKU: Studies in Artistic Research (Journal)
Publication peer-review
Upland CIC (External organisation)
Membership of board
Discussing Ruskin's Dress
Invited talk
Feeling through Drawing
Invited talk
Drawing the past to think through the future
Invited talk
Reading Fashion In Art
Invited talk
Drawing Investigations - Book Launch
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Drawn from within: Working with radical imperceptibility
Invited talk
Being Human 2019
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
On Ruskin's Good Looking
Invited talk
Absent Presence The Drawings of Sarah Casey, Meet The Artist
Invited talk
Waxing Poetic with Drawing and Dress
Invited talk
Adapting drawing to research historic artefacts
Invited talk
Introducing Ruskin's Good Looking!
Invited talk
Drawing Habits
Invited talk
Dark Matters: Interrogating thresholds
Invited talk
Being Human Our Imperceptible Universe
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Exhibition
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
Exhibition
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
STEAM Hack (Event)
Membership of committee
AHRC workshop Art and Science in Conversation
Invited talk
On Common Grounds
Invited talk
Short Documentary Film
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
Jerwood Drawing Prize 2014 : gallery Floor Talk
Invited talk
Nottingham Trent University
Visiting an external academic institution
Drawing The Dress Collection
Invited talk
Triptych Papers: Models for Research based Practice
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Public Award, Commendation
Prize (including medals and awards)
Henry Moore Institute Visiting Research Fellow
Fellowship awarded competitively
Scottish Artist in Residence
Fellowship awarded competitively
South of Scotland Visual Artist & Craft Maker Awards 22-23
Prize (including medals and awards)
John Muir Trust Creative Freedom Prize (3d)
Prize (including medals and awards)
Royal Scottish Academy William Littlejohn Award
Prize (including medals and awards)
- Insight
- Practices