Artist Profile: Sally Capewell
By the Bay Exhibition, Rose de Freycinet Gallery, 2026
Sally Capewell is based in Geraldton, but until recently lived in Denham, where she spent three decades captivated by the Bay’s natural abundance.
Displaying an obsessive fascination with materials shared by a number of the 2026 By the Bay artists, her works for the project explore the sculptural potential of Shark Bay’s iconic and ubiquitous seagrass and other seaweeds that accumulate on local beaches (and at the tip, where tonnes of the material are discarded each year).
Capewell has utilised this humble fibre in the creation of a suite of exquisitely refined domestic objects – a curtain, a dress, and a series of vessels – constructed through hand and machine stitching, plaiting and weaving, sometimes in conversation with clay, paper or other found natural objects (including a pearl shell and a dried sea urchin). These familiar forms are rendered strange and visceral through the use of organic matter, conjuring a subtle sense of the uncanny (her life-sized but unwearable gown hovers ghost-like in space, subtly glowing from within, while the vessels include mysterious open-ended forms suggestive of a
long-forgotten purpose).
The works range in scale from intimate to monumental, the vessels showcasing the ephemeral delicacy of the material while her huge seagrass curtain evokes the depths of the ocean itself with its semi-translucent layering and undulating shadows.
Curated by Andrew Nicholls
Conceived by the Shark Bay World Heritage Discovery & Visitor Centre,
Installed by Andrew Nicholls and Aiyana Wright
Project Managed by Julia Fenny
Videography by: Michael Fletcher
Photography by: Ash Buchholz
This project is delivered by the Shire of Shark Bay, and made possible through the Regional Arts Venue Support program managed by Western Australian State Government.
