Sarah Buckley | Tethered

“Tethered’ is textile artist Sarah Buckley’s first solo show since graduating with a BA in Visual Art from Sherkin island, Co. Cork in 2018. She is delighted to be showing her new body of work in the Signal Arts Centre in Bray. Her work is an exploration of her own personal journey with childhood trauma resulting from two infantile haemangiomas. Haemangioma’s are benign vascular birthmarks which, in my case, affected my sight and skin on the right hand side of my face. Having discovered letters and photographs in her childhood home dating back to treatment during her infancy, and coinciding with the lockdowns of Covid 19 in 2020, Sarah began to research and explore her own story and the representation of childhood, memory and trauma in visual art. The work takes the form of installation, work on fabric and drawings in stitch and depicts aspect of her childhood varying from typical activities like cycling and playing to subtle references to the more difficult parts of her childhood like hospital visits, surgeries, trauma and pain etc. Interested in engaging discussion around childhood memory and perception, she uses the medium of textiles for its accessibility of understanding, associations of childhood and slow, mediative production.

Sarah graduated with a BA in Visual Art (Sherkin Island) in 2018 and completed a Special Award in Textiles (Level 8) in the Crawford College of Art and Design in 2024. Her work has been exhibited in Ireland and the UK and she received an Arts Council Agility Award in 2021. She curated EMERGE with Cork Craft and Design in August 2024 and has facilitated a number of workshops with Sample Studies/Creative Ireland, Cork County Council Artist in Schools programme and various arts centres in Munster.

Friday 16th May 2025, 7pm to 9pm