Plastic Arts - Meet the Artist

Plastic Arts is presented by Dr Sarah Goffman as part of Darebin FUSE Festival's 2025 Open Access program.

This special 'Meet the Artist' event is a one-off opportunity to learn more about Sarah's work.

Sarah’s plastic forgeries mimic ceramic patterns and designs that go back hundreds of years, including the familiar willow pattern and the Dutch Delftware that forms part of the worldwide pottery family of blue and white.

“It’s mostly just spray paint and trickery,” says Sarah Goffman of her work. Armed with a rotary tool, a hot glue gun and a soldering iron, she creates exquisite historical replicas and contemporary art pieces out of common trash. A self-confession a love of different materials, and in particularly plastic. “There’s no right or wrong material as far as I’m concerned, any material is worthy of making art out of,” she says. “But we live in a very plastic society, and I’ve always had an attraction to plastics.”

Drawing from a whole rainbow of colour-sorted detritus she recombines and reconfigures, turning items bound for the dump into something precious – something of status. The trash conversion is just the cornerstone of a dynamic, decades-long practice that spans sculpture, video, installation, performance, and painting. 

Whatever the medium, she believes her role as an artist is to respond to what’s going on in the world around her. Her practice asks us to reevaluate and revalue our relationship with materials by considering them in curious and thought-provoking contexts.

“We are all seeing what’s happening and responding in our own way, with what materials we have at hand,” she concludes. “Some artists have oil on canvas. And then there’s me, burning holes in plastic bottles.”

Please come along and have a look at the beautiful interpretations of blue and white fine porcelain at the Fairfield Library from 1-14 September.

Image: Objects made by Dr Sarah Goffman, photo by Michael Myers.