Margarita Sampson: Bio

Margarita Sampson was raised on Norfolk Island, and the varied sea life made an indelible impression on her as a small child. As an adult, her sculpture and jewellery work draws upon this rich visual vocabulary. All works are meticulously hand-made by the artist, comprising of hand and machine sewn textiles. In Sampson's Infectious Desires series, the found furniture is sawn and altered, re-carved and gilded, before being overlaid with textile 'landscapes'.

Born in Nowra, NSW (1970), Margarita Sampson grew up on Norfolk Island, attending COFA in Sydney with a BA & M.Art in painting (1990, 92). She began textile sculptural work in response to the first Sculpture Sea (1997) & a photograph of her initial work ‘Urchins’ went become one of the defining images of the exhibition in its early days. Her following work “Fish Curtain’ received the People’s Choice in 1998. Her textile work is often inspired by her childhood summers spent moving between aquatic & terrestrial realms on Norfolk, and embraces hybrid soft forms that transition between human, animal, vegetative and mineral states. 

After some 15 years away from Australia, Sampson returned in 2011 and won the Object section of the Waterhouse Art Prize in 2012 with her work ‘Anenome Incursions: Zsa-Zsa', and subsequent works been finalists in the Wynne prize, the Blake Prize, twelve Sculpture by the Seas Exhibitions and most recently won the Hillview Indoor Sculpture Award 2018.  Her solo show ‘Infectious Desires’ at Stanley Street Gallery in 2015 received international press coverage and critical acclaim. 

Sampson’s work often takes a domestic object and imagines a paradigm of excessive growth, where the soft parts grow and overtake the host, a reflection on current environmental unbalances and possible ecosystem collapse. The work is also very personal, as the objects contain lush openings, curvaceous forms, are provocative and often feminist; meditating on the artist’s aging body within society and spiritually reflecting the artist’s Buddhist practice. She currently lives in a meditation retreat centre. 

Sampson works with commercially available textiles and found objects for her interior works, but also draws on her jewellery practice for work utilising enamel and copper, and wood and steel for large outdoor works.