Souvenir of Time: Vanessa Berry and Sarah Goffman in conversation

Artist Sarah Goffman and writer Vanessa Berry share a love of incidental, discarded or 'trash' objects, and a passion for collecting. Both live and work surrounded by their collections, and in this conversation will come together to discuss the material and imaginative possibilities of the objects that inspire their creative practices.

Amid stories of plastic bottles, toy rhinos, op shop figurines and paper ephemera, Sarah and Vanessa will discuss their relationships with objects, and their new works: Sarah's upcoming 'Applied Arts' exhibition in the Penelope Gallery, an installation of intricate ‘object d’art’ museum replicas alchemically created from waste materials; and Vanessa's new essay collection Gentle and Fierce, a memoir themed around figures and representations of animals. 

Dr Vanessa Berry is a writer and artist who works with history, memory and archives. She is a lecturer in creative writing in the Department of English at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Gentle and Fierce (Giramondo 2021), and Mirror Sydney: an atlas of reflections (Giramondo 2017). 

Dr Sarah Goffman is a contemporary artist who has been exhibiting mixed media installations since 1994. She completed a Diploma of Arts in Photography (1994) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (2000) at the National Art School and in 2018 was awarded a Doctor of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong.

Featured image: Sarah Goffman, Black and White, 2020, plastic, dimensions variable.