About Sophie Gilbert
Her last name is Gilbert, as is her artist’s name, withstanding any gender connotation.
From her Belgium origins, migrant life in Australia and subsequent globe trotting, forever a migrant, Gilbert’s personality germinated through racial and sexual discrimination, abandonment and abuse. This adversity thus formed her sensitivity, with one foot on each side of the globe, between French, Asian and English cultures, consequently developing an acute global perception, pertaining to the evolution of the contemporary world, between the fatuity of social appearance and the pressing environmental challenge.
The journey through expression to find stance and balance is driven by her past and the new directions imposed by the observation of man and his dying world.
Driven by a taste for commitment and aesthetics, Gilbert specialises in the reevaluation of abandoned materials to refer to despoiled lands, pollution, injustice, discrimination, abuse and the absence of love in the world.
Confronted daily with anthropogenic waste in the Pacific Islands, where she now lives, Gilbert assigns them a new function, by using them as the main source of material for her work. This change of trajectory that she applies to the discarded fragments of the contemporary world is also a way for her to redraw her own path and thus, her worth.
After a career dedicated to the trade of consumer products and image, she now emphasises the importance of attention to their afterlife, questions the futility of image, as to subjugate the negativity of consumerism and its causes, a projection of her personal quest for meaning.
2023 SWELL ARTWORK – Méduse
‘Méduse’ represents an age-old, natural organism, that was once considered ‘The Lung of the Ocean’.
By capturing the jellyfish in anthropogenic plastics, the focus is on oceanic toxic contamination and the important role jellyfish will play in the filtering of microplastic nanoparticles.
This translucent sea creature may have no brain, no blood, no heart but it represents hope, despite destructive human activities that do environmental harm.
Socials:
Facebook: Gilbert Art
Come and see for yourself at SWELL Sculpture Festival, Pacific Parade, Currumbin 8th – 17th September