Sapphire Goss is a multi-disciplinary artist who works with moving image, photography and other lens-based methods. Using obsolete technologies she creates chimerical imagery using unexpected materials, looping and processing to make an ‘analogue uncanny’: grainy, shimmering, otherworldly; bursts of light and emotion both moving and mysterious. Using hybrid material processes: antique glass, paper, liquid lenses or real plants, inputs from public contributors, multiple channels that feedback in endless combinations or sound/data responsive elements - she creates work that grows, lives and decays beyond the surface, beyond the edge of the frames and the looking glass of the image.
Goss' work has been shown widely in exhibitions and events including the Barbican, Tate Exchange, By Art Matters Hangzhou, Fermynwoods Contemporary, Milton Keynes Art Centre, East End Film Festival, and Maysles Centre New York. She has received several awards, most recently the Arts Council Developing Your Creative Practice award for her project Attic Windows of the Infinite. In 2018 she was the recipient of ACE funding for the large-scale multimedia project Eternity City.She was selected for Live Cinema UK’s National Talent Pool in 2018. Her video, photography, research and writing work has been featured in performances, events, commissioned for a variety of platforms and used for commercial content and music videos.
“Goss’s work shares the spirit of the Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambety, who called cinema “magic in the service of dreams.” Each video of hers is a reinvention of cinema and a reminder of the magic inherent in the medium. Often working with analogue or even expired film and using homemade lenses to feature the repetitive textures of water, light, erosion, and other ecological materials and processes, Goss manages to create video art that is both wholly new and utterly infused with material history.”
Darran Anderson in the Yale Review, winter 2023 issue.
"The works explore the stagnation of time and the dissociation between memory and illusion, but also form a collision between distance and rhythm, constructing a drifting and blurred dream, guiding us to shuttle between the tangible and intangible, time and space."
Exhibition notes: To the Past, to the Future, By Art Matters Hangzhou
Selected Exhibitions
Upcoming
Days of Wonder, Hove Museum, UK
Light Nights Denver, Clock Tower, Denver USA
2024
Vital Capacities, Puch Gallery, Washington State USA
2023
SALT Festival of Sea and Earth, Quarterhouse, Folkestone
Nowhere to Meet Boys in Bletchley, Blecca-Lea, Bletchley
Analogue Uncanny (solo show, May 2023), UCA Project Space, Folkestone
Moving Image Program, Adelaide Festival Centre, Australia
Just the Place, Quay Arts, Isle of Wight
Transmutation, London Alternative Photography/Thanet Alt Photo, Margate
2022
To the Past, to the Future, By Art Matters, Hangzhou, China
Out of Date, The Modernist Gallery, Manchester
Dark Morass installation, SparkHouse, London
Silver Sisters: Thanet Alt Photo/POW Thanet, The Margate School, Margate
Into the Offing at Folkestone Fringe Profound Sound, Brewery Tap, Folkestone
2021
Sphere: Boojum & Snark, Sandown, Isle of Wight (work in permanent collection)
Obscura, The Carousel, Nottingham
ÖRES 21 kesänäyttely / ÖRES 21 summer exhibition: Örö, Finland
Triple Harvest: the Archives: Fermynwoods, Northamptonshire
2020
Triple Harvest (online), Fermynwoods Contemporary Art
2019
As Above So Below: Resort Studios for Margate Film Festival, Margate
Astronomical Light: Lumen at Crypt Gallery St Pancras, London
11th Hour: Customs House for Groundwork Gallery, King’s Lynn
Notes on a Periphery: Gray’s, Aberdeen
AWED at 4s: Sheraton, New Orleans
2018
Eternity City: The Old Bus Station Milton Keynes (Solo)
Somewhere Between Up There & Down Here: Creative Quarter, Folkestone
Who Are We - Are We Data?:Tate Exchange, London
2017
This is Not Art Festival: Liminal Boundaries London
Digital Weekender: Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne
Your Wilderness Revisited: Red Gallery, London
Groundwork: Tracing the Pathway: Milton Keynes Arts Centre, Milton Keynes
2016
Interfaces Monthly: Fish Island Labs (The Trampery /The Barbican), London
Brainchild: Platform, London
POW Thanet: Moving Image Margate, Margate House Gallery
2015
Afterthought: The Body Beyond the Present: Fish Island Labs, London
CultureTECH Festival: Future Artist Makers Exhibition: Studio 80-81, Londonderry
Interfaces: Processing Reality through Art and Technology: The Barbican, London
2014
Digital Revolution: Barbican (Gaga film with Studio XO)
ARTRAVE: Techhaus / Haus of Gaga NYC (with Studio XO)
Screenings/Festivals/Live/Commissions
2023
Ribalta Experimental Film Festival, Italy
Analogue Ensemble artists film screenings, Ramsgate UK
Live Visuals commission for Stevie Nicks Tour
'Dreamwave' Concept film commissioned by Better Trends Co
2022
Xylophbia - 6 x video commissions for Fermynwoods Contemporary Art
Double Lucifer, -TVAM, Invada
Incandescent Vapour - Art School Live, Manchester
Shadows Fall - live cinema performance at SparkHouse London
Prismatic Ground Experimental Documentary Festival, Maysles Centre, New York
Nietzsche on the Beach, DC Gore for Domino Records
2021
Artists Film Screening at Harbour Arm Screen, Folkestone Triennial Festival / Folkestone Fringe
Mirry Installation film at Seachange Festival, Totnes Cinema
13 films aspects of Analogue - Flatpack Festival Coventry
Light of Other Days, Breathing in Art commissions by Fermynwoods
2020
Neverending Jigsaw commissioned by Fermynwoods
Umbrellabirds Spotify canvas & video art commission
Closes and Opens Film essay Edinburgh University Futures Institute
2019
Your Wilderness Revisited: Live visuals tour for musician William Doyle
Vanishing Lands: Live visuals commission for Bella Union Records
Magdalene video art: Battersea Arts Centre/Old Diorama
Silk Moth Collaboration for opera: Arcola Theatre, London
O.Project: Networks screening
Extimacy conceptual video on soft robotics, Vogue
2018
Experimental Film Festival: Middlesborough
Mutant Man: Video art for theatre production, London
East End Film Festival: Expanded Cinema/live video and music performance
ColLive: collaboration with the Silk Street Symphonia, London
Milton Keynes of the Mind: Open University Journal of Cultural Economy
Power of the Individual: National Portrait Gallery.
Rain in White City: White Noise magazine
2014-16
Terminal: Live visuals for electronic artists Jupiter-C, Green Man, Apiary etc
Wayne McGregor / Studio XO Atomos - Video research & documentation
Skin: Studio XO for Lexus NX
Soft: Concept film on future skin sensing for Philips
Residencies
2024 Days of Wonder, Video Club/Vital Capacities/Corridor/Brighton Museums
2021 Boojum & Snark, Sandown, Isle of Wight
2020 Öres, Örö, Finland
2019 Battersea Arts Centre, London
Journal of Cultural Economy, London
Time and Space, Metal Liverpool
2018 Eternity City / Milton Keynes Arts Centre
2017 Groundwork at Tracing the Pathway Citation Artist Residency
Workshops/Awards/Other
ACE Developing Your Creative Practice Award (2021)
Moving Image Artists Salon (Sept 2020 & April 2022)
Interior: an Exquisite Corpse Film, organising a collaborative work (2020)
Experimental Documentary Practice (2019, 20, 21, 22) Guest Lectures, Goldsmiths
Experimental Narratives (2021) UAL Guest Lecture
Online screening of Closes and Opens & panel with the Edinburgh Futures Institute (2020)
ACE funding - Eternity City workshop programme at MK Arts Centre & MK Gallery (2018),
AWED - Are WE Data Tate Exchange (2018),
Lug-Li workshops with Hinterlands London for the Canals & Rivers Trust (2018),
Live Cinema Talent Pool (2017-present)
Fish Island Labs A mentoring platform between Trampery & Barbican (2014-2016).
CultureTECH Festival: Future Artist Makers (2015).
Interfaces Monthly / Art Tech Networks panels (2015-2016)
AHRC Funding award: full funding for MA in Visual Anthropology (2010)
Publications
The Modernist, Moving Image Artist Journal, White Noise, Journal of Cultural Economy, The Quietus, It’s Nice That, Vice, MK Citizen, Crack Magazine, London Calling, ArtRabbit, Resident Advisor, The Stage, BBC Radio, Fleur and Arbour.