Nottingham Contemporary celebrates the work of late Nottingham artist Sarah Cunningham with Midnight Sun, the largest presentation of her work to date. Senior Curator Katie Simpson and Senior Marketing Manager Catherine Masters tell us about bringing Sarah’s work home, remembering the artist behind it, and creating an exhibition that feels like stepping inside one of her paintings.
What was Sarah like as a person? What can you tell us about her from working with and knowing her?
KS: Sarah was a force: incredibly strong-headed, articulate, kind, spiritual, and compassionate, someone who truly saw beauty in the world and wanted to learn everything she could about different people, communities, histories, nature, and the coexistence of all living entities. She was curious and generous in conversations about her work, incredibly supportive and caring towards others and was loved and respected dearly.
Tell me about Sarah’s artwork. Where did the name ‘Midnight Sun’ come from?
KS: Midnight Sun is the title of one of Sarah’s works, which isn’t actually included in the exhibition, but we felt it beautifully exemplified her use of tone and colour, and her interest in the blending of time: day and night, dawn and dusk, and elements of sci-fi and world-building. The title draws you in like the works themselves – what does a world with a midnight sun look like? It speaks to the immersive aspect of Sarah’s work; she wasn’t just thinking representationally to depict landscapes or recognisable forms, but materially, spiritually and immersive-ly, to help us see beyond the limits of our worlds and imagine new possibilities.
Sarah worked as a gallery assistant at Nottingham Contemporary in 2019. As former colleagues of Sarah’s, how much did you draw on personal memories or conversations with her, as well as the work itself?
KS: We started working on Sarah’s show in 2025, and over the past year there have been many chats in the galleries when colleagues have fondly remembered a conversation, and larger group gatherings to go through the exhibition concept and plans, sharing stories and insights across the team.
Her practice shifted after her time at NC; she moved away from working with collage to working on large-scale oil paintings on canvas, which was nurtured and developed further during her studies at the Royal College of Art (RCA). The phrase that keeps cropping up about Sarah and her work is, ‘she was a painter’s painter’ and a generous one at that, gifting work to colleagues and friends and always engaging in conversations about art and life. Many people remember visiting Sarah in her studio at Backlit when she lived in Nottingham.
I’ll be forever grateful that I had the pleasure of meeting Sarah in her London studio in Feb 2024, where we discussed her love of sci-fi, writing and poetry, her rhythms of working in the studio, and her practice of working large-scale, layering and removing paint in a dance that involved her whole body and her deep mindful connection to her work.
Sarah’s work has been seen and toured internationally. What do you think it was that made it well received by foreign audiences?
KS: I think the work is incredibly generous and powerful and that taps into shared human emotions of awe, beauty and energy. The scale of the works interacts with the body in a physiological way, and we feel something when we’re in their presence; that shared bodily experience can be felt anytime, anywhere in the world, wherever the paintings might be.
What do you think it means for both you and for Nottingham to have Sarah’s artwork exhibited at Nottingham Contemporary?
CM: It was amazing to watch Sarah grow and rise through the art world, and the team at NC have always been cheering on from the sidelines as one of our own went out and achieved so much. We all celebrated her wins when she got onto the MA course at the RCA, and when she went on to be signed by Lisson Gallery and got the recognition she deserved. It feels incredibly special that we’re able to host so much of her work in our galleries in this homecoming show, and we hope that it brings new audiences to her work as well as giving those who knew and loved her a space to celebrate her and spend time with so many of her incredible paintings in one place.
The show runs alongside Julia Isídrez's Mud is Everything. How much thought goes into how two accompanying exhibitions like this complement each other?
KS: There are beautiful synergies across both exhibitions, which seem unlikely bedfellows at first due to the geographical distance between both artists’ heritage and identity (Isídrez works in Paraguay). Sarah’s experience living with the Kuna community in the Panama rainforest in 2018 creates a real connection between the contexts of both shows, with both artists exploring interspecies relations and the agency of non-human actors. Both draw from the imagination and dream worlds to create new creatures and landscapes through visual and creative storytelling. Staff at NC have been imagining Julia’s ceramic creatures living deep inside one of Sarah’s paintings, and this has been a beautiful image to hold in our minds whilst developing the shows!
The title draws you in like the works themselves – what does a world with a midnight sun look like?
The exhibition is built around a night-to-day arc, from The World It Softly Lulls through Via Lucis to Starshine and Clay. How did you land on that sequence, and what do you want visitors to feel as they move through it?
KS: This sequence came very organically between co-curator Niall Ó Faircheallaigh and me, and we were immediately drawn to these three works as markers of transition between night and day, and different natural energies. We wanted to present the works in a way that the space around the paintings contributed to the worlds Sarah was building within them - be that a darker mythical space or a bright, open, disordered space.
The first room features darker tones reminiscent of earth and water; the beginnings of new life. The second gallery features large eruptive works in bright red, yellow and orange, like a volcanic eruption or elements of the formation of a new star taking shape.
The press material mentions "opening the portals held by the painting's edge" for an immersive experience – what does that mean practically? Has the show's design itself changed to reflect that idea?
KS: We are keen for the exhibition to feel like you're being pulled into one of Sarah’s paintings, which I think you feel when you're in the presence of the work. They are incredibly powerful and moving. In this sense, we’re envisioning the exhibition as one large canvas, rather than numerous individual works; the paint flows off one canvas into another, using our bodies as vessels to connect their energy.
The exhibition hang is somewhat untraditional to create something more like an immersive journey. Works are still presented as paintings, but there is a triangulation occurring between the beauty and energy within the works themselves, the curatorial positioning of these works in dialogue with one another, and the audience's personal experience of being enveloped by them.
Another special element of the show is that we’ve commissioned brilliant local artist Jack Narewski to work alongside our Head Technician David Thomas to design and fabricate three oak benches that are reminiscent of fallen trees in a woodland or forest. They act as reminders of Sarah’s practice of often painting outside, creating spaces for visitors to sit and take in the work and remember or think about Sarah. This collaboration feels even more meaningful as Jack currently works from Sarah’s former studio in Backlit, where you can still see paint splatters and marks on the floor from Sarah’s time there.
How did you work with her estate, family, or gallery (Lisson) to select works, including the "never-before-seen" studio pieces?
KS: From the beginning, we’ve had guidance and support from Lisson, who knew Sarah’s practice in depth, and generous conversations from her family and friends who she would be in daily contact with and who she shared so much about her practice with, as well as input from NC staff and the wider Nottingham community who knew and loved Sarah.
This exhibition is just the start of many more for Sarah’s work, hence it not being defined as a retrospective or a final presentation but an opportunity to see her work in one way, with the hope of many more presentations by other curators and artists globally, who fall in love with her work as much as we have.
There's an accompanying publication with contributions from you both and writer and art critic Hettie Judah. What did you want that book to do that the exhibition itself couldn't?
KS: Sarah was an avid reader, writer, poet and storyteller with literary and poetic references constantly feeding her work. We wanted the publication to speak to this side of Sarah’s practice and bring in narrative devices to accompany the rich bodily abstract forms on canvas. The catalogue is an extension of the exhibition to some degree, organised by the same three works or chapters (The World It Softly Lulls, Via Lucis, Starshine + Clay) that traverse the biographical, the philosophical and the fictional.
Hettie Judah traces Sarah’s biography alongside her artistic and literary influences, Nottingham-based artist John Newling provides a painter-on-painter reading of her work, and curator Niall Ó Faircheallaigh’s speculative fiction takes the reader on a personal journey through the portals of Sarah’s paintings, guiding us through an exploration of multiple overlapping worlds.
Sarah Cunningham’s Midnight Sun shows at Nottingham Contemporary until Sunday 10 January 2027, alongside Julia Isídrez: Mud is everything.
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