• A
  • A
  • A
  • A
  • A
  • A

Sarah Jayne Booth

sarahjaynebooth.com
sarahjaynebooth.com
About the member

Sarah Jayne Booth is a Cork based multi-media installation artist whose work centres on domesticity, gender
inequality and social histories. She has an MA in Art & Process from MTU 2014 and maintains an actively
engaged practice with a number of solo exhibitions, bursaries and notable group exhibitions. She initiated and
heads up the collective r. a. g. e. (realising•absolute•gender•equality) alongside Dr Eve Olney, Fiona Ní Leíme & Dr Honor Tuohy, their recent zine publications are available on weragetogether.com.

Upcoming group exhibitions: Rua Red Spring Open and The Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon. In 2022 she
created a new body of work (for) All Our Grievous Doings for a group exhibition Bones in the Attic at the Hugh
Lane Gallery, Dublin. Also in 2022 The Arts Council of Ireland acquired This will not be Pretty for their
collection. Other noteworthy achievements in 2021 include a project award from the Domestic Violence
Network Cork for the ‘16 Days of Activism’ campaign, it launched with a solo exhibition It’s still not Pretty in
Triskel Arts Centre and Cork City Council Atrium. Also in 2021 she received an Arts Council Agility Award
and a Bursary from Cork City Council which produced This will not be Pretty, an exhibition, performance and
publication in collaboration with r.a.g.e. In 2020 she received Arts Council Professional Development Funding.
She showed in three group exhibitions in 2019: I see crimson I see red, Cork, Cahoots A4 Sounds, Dublin and
the Kinsale Arts Festival. In 2017 Diving the Wreck a collaboration with SoftTack was performed in UCC Cork,
UCD Dublin and Lass Struggle UCL London. She’s had three other solo exhibitions at Signal Arts Centre,
South Tipperary Arts Centre and the Bookcube Gallery and has been awarded residencies with 126 Artist–Run
Gallery, Galway and Fire Station Studios, Dublin. She sits on the board of directors at Sample-Studios, Cork
where she also holds a studio.

Exhibitions

Group exhibitions

  • I see crimson I see red Cork (2019)
  • Cahoots A4 Sounds Dublin (2019)
  • Kinsale Arts Festival (2019)
  • Diving the Wreck: collaboration with SoftTack , UCC Cork, UCD Dublin & Lass Struggle UCL London (2017)

Solo exhibitions

  • Signal Arts Centre, South Tipperary Arts Centre & Bookcube Gallery
Residency
  • 2020 Cill Rialaig Arts Centre Residency.
  • 126 Artist-Run Gallery Galway Residency & Fire Station Studios Residency.

Sarah Jayne
Booth

Sarah Jayne Booth is a multi-media installation artist. Consistent themes across her practice include a feminist
perspective of concepts that draw from gender-based, normalised, systemic oppressive structures within state
institutions. Sarah Jayne’s experimental/multidisciplinary praxis expands on these topics in new work, shaping
insights into violence and analysing how it’s connected to, and embedded in, these patriarchal structures. These
installations consist of subverted reconfigurations of domestic objects that ordinarily carry benign social historic
contexts; the distortions to their narratives and strange tensions are conceived by how things are placed/held in
relation to each other.

(for) All Our Grievous Doings, her newest work primarily explores femicide. Derived from the Greek word
‘mīsoguníā’, the term misogyny was first coined in English in 1615 after Joseph Swetnam’s anti-women rant in
his pamphlet ‘The arraignment of lewd, idle, froward and unconstant women’. 400 hundred years on (for) All
Our Grievous Doings examines this historic demonisation of women that persists in current times. From myths
that vilified women such as stealing penes, tests like swimming the witch, to an all out purge are explored and
knitted together using artefacts, text and an ethereal soundscape. An uncanny ensemble of voices and
reverberations synchronise with the opulent materials and discarded domestic objects – creating a conflictual
aesthetic environment striving for balance. The normalisation of the everyday threat of violence is recast and
held within the ill-ease that the work emits: a psychosocial setting of brutality and mundanity. Multiple cultural,
historical and social narratives are interwoven throughout the installation and there is never a shortage of
anecdotes to draw from. As the title of this work suggests, (for) All Our Grievous Doings, opens a dialogue
across this ongoing ‘history’ of violence against women, asking such questions as, What exactly are women
guilty of? How do the punishments commensurate with the crimes against women? Who are the aggressors?
What are the defence mechanisms of self-preservation? Where does the notion of equality reside within this
scenario?

Sarah Jayne Booth
Sarah Jayne Booth
Sarah Jayne Booth
Sarah Jayne Booth