Sarah Beddington is a British visual artist and filmmaker based in London. Her research-based works in film and video, sculpture, performance and public art, explore the overlaps between the historical, the mythical and the everyday, often focusing on journeys and migration. Traces in the landscape, the role of memory and non-chronological histories are also important components in her work. Seemingly disparate elements may become connected, opening up spaces to imagine alternate realities and possible future scenarios. 

Her interest in landscape, memory and imagination evolved while growing up in a rural, isolated village in the southwest of England where a sense of an ancient past visible within the present was clearly inscribed across the surrounding Wiltshire chalk downland.

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After completing a Masters Degree in Fine Art at Central Saint Martin’s in 1996, Beddington gradually shifted her focus from painting towards the moving image and  in 2002, relocated to New York. Working across a wide range of media, Beddington received a Bloomberg Special Commission in 2008 and has been nominated for various awards including the Paul Hamlyn and the Derek Jarman. In 2014 she was commissioned by Percent for Art in New York to design the lobby of a new school.

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She has completed many multi and single-screen film and video works that have been shown internationally in film festivals, museums, non-profit spaces and galleries including: Sheffield DocFest; Liverpool Biennale; Centre Pompidou, Paris; MASS MoCA, USA; FidMarseille International Film Festival; LOOP film and video festival, Barcelona; Hayward Gallery, London; San Francisco Film Festival; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio and The Drawing Center, New York. In addition to the numerous commissions, awards and artists’ residencies, her work can be seen in many public collections including Arts Council England.

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Fadia’s Tree is Beddington’s first feature length film. As a self-shooting director, her background as a painter is evident in the way she frames images and by how she lets the camera linger on a shot. She manages to convey a powerful sense of place, often finding meaning in what may initially appear inconsequential details. The film marks a culmination of her earlier and parallel works in which a poetic sensibility is used to draw out an alternate way of looking at complex subjects. Resolutely committed to the issues she makes work about, her films operate on both an intellectual and emotional level to try and open up new dialogues that may result in change.