Studio H Canada International Artist Residencies

Performance, Multimedia, Visual Art

Residency Dates: September 6–October 3, 2026

Studio H Canada is excited to welcome Sadie Martin, an emerging multidisciplinary artist and performer from London, United Kingdom. Working across visual art, performance, movement, design and storytelling, Sadie approaches art-making as a form of storytelling and world-building. Their practice draws on mythology, folklore, Gothic traditions, gender studies and theatrical spectacle to explore femininity, desire, transformation and the tensions between beauty and horror.

During their residency, Sadie is developing New Moon, a fictional world exploring femininity, nature, transformation and belief. Through painting, drawing, sculpture, movement, writing, sound and performance, they are experimenting with characters, creatures, objects, symbols and rituals as fragments of a larger mythology. The project remains deliberately open-ended, with each experiment helping Sadie discover what this world is and what it might become.

Artist Statement

My practice is multidisciplinary, moving between visual art, performance, movement, design, and storytelling. I am interested in the relationship between artwork and audience, and in how art can create an emotional and imaginative experience rather than simply something to observe.

Drawing on mythology, folklore, Gothic traditions, gender studies, and theatrical spectacle, my work explores femininity, desire, transformation, and the tensions between beauty and horror. I am particularly interested in the ways stories shape our understanding of the body, identity, nature, and the world around us.

Having trained as an artist and performer, I approach art-making as a form of storytelling and world-building. I am interested in creating fictional worlds that audiences can enter, investigate, and gradually decipher. Rather than presenting a single fixed narrative, I use fragments, objects, images, characters, symbols, movement, and recurring motifs to suggest stories that extend beyond the individual artwork.

My process is research-driven and interdisciplinary. I draw from historical, literary, and cultural sources before developing ideas which often move between mediums, allowing characters, objects, and narratives to reappear in different forms and build interconnected worlds.

I want my work to reward curiosity. Small details and recurring symbols become clues which, when uncovered, allow deeper understanding of the fictional worlds and the characters that live within them.

I hope to create work that offers audiences not only something to observe, but a world they can enter.

New Moon

New Moon is a developing fictional world exploring femininity, nature, transformation and belief.

The project began with an interest in the long-standing connections between women and the natural world. Flowers, trees, the Moon, water, blood, growth, decay and cycles of life have all been used to describe or understand women and the body. I am interested in looking beyond these familiar associations and considering what they might reveal about change, power, beauty and the physical experience of being alive.

Nature within New Moon is not simply beautiful or gentle. It grows, consumes, reproduces, transforms and dies. This creates a space to explore femininity alongside both the beauty and violence of the natural world.

The project is also concerned with transformation and belief. I am exploring the idea of an entity created through attention, imagination and belief. And what might happen if something imagined could begin to take physical form.

I am developing the world through painting, drawing, sculpture, movement, writing, sound and performance. Rather than illustrating a single story, I am creating fragments of a larger mythology: characters, creatures, objects, symbols, rituals and traces of events that suggest a world beyond what is immediately visible.

The work is still developing. Each experiment becomes part of the process of discovering what this world is, what exists within it, and what it might become.

Gallery

About the Artist

Sadie Martin is a UK multidisciplinary artist and performer working across visual art, performance, movement, design and storytelling. Their practice explores art as a form of storytelling and world-building, moving between creative disciplines and forms.

Sadie has worked as a dancer, actor, visual artist, choreographer, writer, director and designer. Their interdisciplinary practice is informed by training in both art and performance, with a particular interest in developing ideas through experimentation and collaboration.

Sadie holds a First Class BA in Drawing from Camberwell College of Arts and an MA in Performance: Design and Practice from Central Saint Martins. They are based in London, United Kingdom.

You can learn more about Sadie on Instagram: @xsadiemartinx

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Artists of all media and disciplines are welcome to apply to Studio H Canada International Art Residency – please check out the link here to apply.

Check out previous posts about artists here.