Artist Statement/ Biography

Derek Sargent is a multi-media artist whose practice spans moving image, sculpture, installation and photography. His work excavates notions concerned with the development of identity and sexuality in the formative years of adolescence. Driven by the lack of specific imagery and representation in mainstream media available to queer adolescent boys, his practice focuses on how popular culture reinforces standard gender and sexual roles. His work subverts prevalent heteronormative structures by privileging queer imagery and reinterpreting objects and spaces to reflect the queer adolescent experience.

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Derek Sargent is a recent graduate with first class honors from the South Australian School of Art, he has three times been awarded the Chancellor’s Letters of Commendation from the University of South Australia, and is also a winner of the Constance Gordon-Johnson Sculpture and Installation Prize. In 2015 he received the Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship. His work has been exhibited nationally, including the National Graduate Exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Helpmann Academy Graduate exhibition, Fontanelle Gallery, Paper Mountain, Constance and Firstdraft Gallery. He is a former Co-Director of the Adelaide ARI FELTspace and is currently an education officer at the South Australian School of Art Gallery.