Sarah Isabelle Tan is an artist and researcher whose practice is grounded in a sustained sensitivity to material behaviour. Working across materials and forms, she remains attentive to processes and conditions that emerge and withdraw on their own terms. For her, making is a durational act of staying with what never fully settles without seeking to enclose or stabilise it. Each gesture is calibrated in response to material tendencies, limits and receptivity to its surroundings. This relational and durational position extends beyond her own role to the encounter each work makes possible, which seeks to sustain a bond that binds artist, material and viewer together within an ongoing negotiation of proximity and distance. Engaging various methodologies and contexts, her practice is an ongoing commitment to an ethics of care for what remains provisional and unresolved. At its heart, her work asks how we might sustain a relation with what continually slips beyond reach.
2024 - 2025 Master of Research, Royal College of Art, London
2016 - 2019 Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours), London College of Communication, University of the Arts London
Solo Exhibitions
2021 Alaga, Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film, Singapore
Group Exhibitions
2025 Housewarming, Safehouse, London
2025 Provisional We, The Handbag Factory, London
2025 RCA MRes Research Journeys, Royal College of Art, London
2025 Documentary Awards Film Projection, Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film, Singapore
2024 Salon et Cetera, Ace House Collective, Yogyakarta
2024 No Studio Open Studio, Starch, Singapore
2023 My sleep echoes into the distant land, Daydrinkers Collective, Thailand
2023 Objectifs 20th Anniversary, Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film, Singapore
2022 Surface Tensions, Nouri, Singapore
2022 Cuttings, Mizuma Gallery, Singapore
2022 Akasha, Pasir Panjang Power Station, Singapore
2022 Breath, Artist’s Studio, Singapore
2022 S.E.A. Focus, Sullivan+Strumpf, Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore
2021 Only Losers Left Alive: love songs for the end of the world (Part 2), Yeo Workshop, Singapore
2021 Only Losers Left Alive: love songs for the end of the world (Part 1), Yeo Workshop, Singapore
2021 Julius Baer Next Generation Art Prize, Online Showcase
2020 Portal, DECK, Singapore
2020 Undescribed #5, DECK, Singapore
2019 FLOCK, Art East Gallery (formerly GX gallery), London
2019 Media School Degree Show, UAL: London College of Communication, London
Awards
2025 MRes RCA x HIGH Prize for Creative Excellence, Winner
2021 Julius Baer Next Generation Art Prize, Finalist
2020 Objectifs Documentary Award
Selected Press and Talks
Artist Talk, De La Salle, College of Saint Benilde, Philippines, 11 March 2022
Artist Talk, Staging Mapplethorpe: In Conversation, Appetite Singapore, 3 March 2022
“Lifestyle, Arts & Culture: The Obsessions”, Mens Folio Singapore, March 2021 (online)
“Objectifs Documentary Award”, Time Out Singapore, February 2021 (online)
“Capsule of Care”, B-Side City, June 2021 (online)
“Art Picks”, The Straits Times Singapore, (print: ‘Life’ section 2 April 2021 and online)
“Alaga”, The A-List, March 2021 (online)
“シンガポールでのアート醸成を夢見て。（Sarah Isabelle Tan：フォトアーティスト）”, Bento Soulware Japan, March 2020 (online)
Issue 7888, The British Journal of Photography, October 2019 (print and online)
“Degree Show Highlights”, Revolv Collective, June 2019 (online)