Sarah Williams’ confident and decisive movements with the brush and palette knife produce paintings which are rich, vibrant and tactile. Williams applies layer upon layer of paint; each mixed with the previous application or concealed by the following action to produce subtle variations in texture, colour and lustre.

For the most part, Williams’ compositions are derived from architectural spaces - staircases, rooms, corridors and the like - the banal interstitial spaces we move through every day and rarely pause to consider or appreciate. However, the geometry of these spaces and the movements and nuances of paint supersede any clear image or schematic. In a departure from her better-known subject matter, for the Ahead of the Curve exhibition Williams has dressed up a series of predatory and pest animals with party hats and people’s names, likening them to characters you might eject from your party.

As the child of missionaries based in the Philippines, Williams spent her first twelve years travelling between Manila and NZ, during which time her family lived in thirteen different houses. She completed an MFA at the University of Auckland in 2010 and is currently based in Wanaka.