Sally Barker - Ogden Water Nature Reserve - Artist Residency
In collaboration with Calderdale Year of Culture and various local venues, the Artist in Residence Programme for 2024 and 2025 aims to celebrate Calderdale’s vibrant creative community. As part of this initiative, local visual artists will immerse themselves in new environments, giving the public a unique opportunity to witness and engage with their creative processes. Through a series of fully accessible workshops and interactive activities, the residencies will foster meaningful exchanges between artists and the local community.
In this interview, we caught up with Sally Barker , one of the selected artists, to discuss their journey, creative inspirations, and the work they developed during their residency.
Sally studied painting in Hull and Manchester in the 1980s and now works across different art forms, primarily sculpture. Growing up on a farm in Halifax has continually informed her creative practice, grounding her work in the practical and material. Sally spent 22 years living in London, where she started a family, before returning to the North. She now lives and has a studio in Hebden Bridge. She exhibits widely, both nationally and internationally, with notable exhibitions including Century City in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern in 2001, and most recently, at the Old Parcel Office in Scarborough with the Northern and Scottish members of the Royal Society of Sculptors. As an MRSS member, Sally is also actively involved with the Yorkshire Sculptors Group, regularly exhibiting with them.
Sally has always maintained a strong socially engaged practice alongside her studio and gallery work. She has extensive experience in teaching, running projects, courses, workshops, and mentoring, and has participated in numerous residencies, particularly those in natural environments responding to the landscape. She works in diverse settings, with an emphasis on creatively supporting people with physical, emotional, or mental health needs. Sally is currently the Visual Arts Lead for Hoot Creative Arts, an arts and mental health organization in Huddersfield.
Your work spans multiple media, including sculpture, installation, and video. What central themes do you consistently explore in your art, and how do these themes manifest through your choice of materials and processes?
I mainly work with sculpture and installation but also incorporate video, drawing, printing, painting, and occasional performance. I explore ideas around power, control, and fault, both in relation to feminism and the natural environment. While material experimentation plays a big part in my work, I often return to some favorite techniques. Casting, for instance, brings an element of tangible reality, while working with clay offers a wealth of texture, form, and durability.
I explore our often destructive relationship with the natural environment by combining elements of the human body with natural objects. Every mark in the clay—whether squeezed, scratched, thumped, or pinched—represents our impact on the environment. By merging human-imprinted elements with those from nature, I aim to reflect the complexity of our coexistence with the natural world, from the destructive and consuming to the coexisting, learning, and respecting.
I investigate different materials for their emotional potential. For instance, tightly and repetitively pinched clay can mirror aggressive, unrelenting forces in nature. The selection of spiky plants, stinging nettles, buds, roots, and dead things all hold meaning. Plants growing through sculpture represent optimism, reciprocal nurture, and the potential for repair.
Ogden Water Nature Reserve
Ogden Water Nature Reserves's natural environment seems to hold personal and creative significance for you. What drew you to apply for this residency, and how do you see this landscape influencing your work?
The opportunity to immerse myself and work in an incredible natural environment, having this nature reserve as my studio, is a gift. It holds personal significance too, as I used to bring my dad here in his wheelchair on afternoon outings. I feel a strong connection to the place.
The fact that the residency is based around a reservoir also inspires me. This man-made architectural structure, carved out and imposed on the land, resonates with my work, which explores our relationship with the natural environment. I'm interested in our connection to water—how this constructed water supply sustains the local population, and how people come to enjoy and be nourished by the beauty of this expanse. I'm fascinated by the invisible, secret, and sometimes frightening depths of the reservoir.
What specific ideas were you most excited to develop during this residency? How did you see your work evolving throughout the process?
I plan to develop sculpture, drawing, painting, tiny videos, and potentially longer, edited videos. I’m interested in blurring the lines between these art forms and exploring how they connect.
I want to create work that captures the essence of the nature reserve. I aim to build on previous projects, taking them further by incorporating elements specific to this site. I’m also developing my ceramics skills, working with wild, naturally sourced clay and imprinting it with natural forms and parts of the body.
As part of my engagement work, I will invite people to create art with me, helping them connect with the site and take away a small piece as a reminder. I’m eager to explore my curiosity in new directions.
You mentioned several influential artists and creatives that inspire you. What is it about their work or approach that resonates with you, and how have they impacted your own creative process?
Louise Bourgeois: Her work is strong, groundbreaking, and unapologetically female. She has a deep openness to materials and their potential, and her desire to express the personal, difficult, and painful is inspiring. She’s a brilliant example of never stopping your work.
Phyllida Barlow: Like Bourgeois, she pushes the limits of comfort. She rejected traditional aesthetics, allowing her work to be governed by its own rules.
Judy Pfaff: I find her inspiring because of her incredible use of materials and her stunning installations. She stretches what you can do with texture, surface, and form. I love her integration of natural forms with industrial, often waste materials.
Tracey Thorn: Her voice often accompanies me in the studio. It's rich and expressive, and I love her lyrics—casual and everyday, yet poetic and deep. Plus, she provides a good dance beat to work to!
Rachel Whiteread: Her work in the 90s got me interested in casting, particularly casting negative space. She was the first woman to win the Turner Prize and is a generous artist.
How does your creative practice integrate into your daily life?
My work is all around my house (mainly because I don’t sell much of it!), so I live with it and think about it daily. I often look at objects, surfaces, or spaces and try to figure out how to cast them, print them, draw them, or make a rubbing of them—or even cast the space between them and something else. I'm always observing how things grow, whether it’s something in my garden or something in the woods behind my house where I walk daily.
I usually have a small sketchbook and pen handy, and I often collect natural objects on my dog walks. At the moment, I’ve got some pine cones in my bag as part of my current process.
What advice would you offer to aspiring artists who may be navigating their own creative paths?
Keep being surprised, keep stretching yourself, and pick up new things—whether it's processes, objects, or inspiration from other artists. Don’t stress if you haven’t made work for a while; keep part of yourself open to it returning, and keep looking outward.
Don’t let anyone tell you what you should be doing. Find that out for yourself—people can help, inspire, and offer advice, but don’t let them dictate your direction. Ignore anyone who puts you down for trying something new or uncomfortable.
Follow your gut. We all need to make money, but you’ll create your best, most authentic work by staying true to yourself. Art is transformative—it can nurture, repair, and sustain.
