si sapsford

Breeches Buoy Rescue and  After the Shout

Following a National Portrait Gallery Travel Award, Sapsford travelled to Salcombe and Iceland to work alongside lifeboat crews. The resulting paintings and drawings explore the tension between human vulnerability and the structures designed to protect us.

After the Shout is a series of three paintings made in response to the Salcombe crew following a night-time call-out. Figures, equipment and the remnants of activity become the subject of paintings concerned with tension, exhaustion and the quiet aftermath of crisis.

Breeches Buoy Rescue comprises four paintings made from an Icelandic rescue training exercise. Suspended bodies, ropes, boats and machinery are brought together in tightly constructed compositions where balance and instability become central. The paintings transform the mechanics of rescue into images of vulnerability, dependence and controlled risk.