Artist Interview: Conversation with Sarah Rhodes

Sarah Rhodes lives and works in Lutruwita/Tasmania where her practice explores how natural environments shape inner experience. Using experimental analogue techniques including photograms and shadow-based projections, she investigates the relationship between body, psyche, and atmosphere.

Rhodes’ series, The Inner Sky, combines a camera-based portrait and handmade photograms to explore the vast interiority of human experience in conversation with physical energetic fields. Moving between the human figure and abstract formations of light and dust, the works create a dialogue between inner life and the surrounding world.

This interview between Sarah Rhodes and Sam Sharp, MAMA Operations Officer, occurred in July 2026.

The Inner Sky explores how our experiences of place and the natural world become a part of us, and how our inner self is influenced by those connections. What do you hope people will experience or reflect on after spending time with these works?

I recorded stories with First Nations people, miners, loggers, artists about their relationship with Queenstown and the surrounding area of lutruwita | Tasmania, for the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. One person told me that seeing the scarred landscape begin to recover gave them hope that they might recover too. That stayed with me because it showed how closely our understanding of ourselves can be tied to the places where we live.

Later, I was drawn to caves to explore how enclosed spaces can change perception. I saw tree roots dangling through the ceiling and smoke stains left when bushfire smoke from above ground had been drawn into the cave. What appeared to be separate environments were visibly part of the same living system.

When the cave lights were turned off, the small enclosed space suddenly felt vast, immeasurable. I became interested in that paradox: how enclosure can heighten perception and open up the imagination.

I hope viewers become more aware of how place moves inside us, and consider how that connection might shape the way we understand ourselves and how we live.

Your works include handmade photograms created using light and shadow, translucent materials and cave dust. Can you tell me about your process and the technical challenges of working in this way?

My research for The Inner Sky moves between three contained spaces: the cave, the darkroom and the sheet of photographic paper. In each space, I am working with darkness and enclosure. Conditions that can heighten your awareness of the space and of yourself within it.

Most of the works I have made for The Inner Sky are photograms. I place translucent paper, cotton wool or cave dust directly onto photosensitive paper and expose them to light. The translucent paper works like a membrane, separating inner and outer space, while still allowing light to pass through. Figure with torch is a camera-based photograph that extends the logic of the photogram where the figure casts a shadow across a layer of paper.

I let the materials guide how they work together. Through repeated tests, I develop a process and follow what begins to emerge. Each print is unexpected and cannot be repeated exactly. The most successful works feel slightly unresolved and are open to interpretation.

Your earlier photographic practice involved observing and documenting the world around you, while these works involve a more direct physical engagement with materials and the darkroom and revealing the unexpected. How has this changed your relationship with image-making?

Before moving to Tasmania, I noticed that the portraits I made there felt different from the ones I made in Sydney. I started wondering how much place shapes the way we see ourselves and relate to the world.

After I moved to Tasmania in 2017, living on an island made me more aware of my own sense of isolation. I became drawn to photographing people who seemed inward or self-contained, but who also had a close connection with the natural world. It made me realise that place is not just where a person lives. It becomes part of how they understand themselves.

My photographs often sat somewhere between portrait and landscape. The person and the place depended on each other.

The Inner Sky continues this enquiry but changes the way I approach it. I am no longer photographing other people experiencing a connection with the natural world. I am working in the darkroom to explore what that connection might look and feel like for me.

Photography has become less about recording an encounter and more about creating one. I decide which materials to bring together but I cannot completely control what happens. I find myself responding to how the materials interact together to decide what to do next. I have found this process of working this way in the darkroom to be totally absorbing.

Sarah Rhodes is a finalist of the 2026 National Photography Prize, presented by the MAMA Art Foundation.

On until 22 November 2026

Photography by Jeremy Weihrauch