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Sadia - Tucson, Arizona photograph by Jade Beall no reproduction without permission |
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Sadia Sadia |
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Dr Sadia Sadia is an installation artist, film maker, sound designer and academic working across a wide variety of media. She is also an award-winning record producer and writer. Her research interests focus on neuroaesthetics including the methodology surrounding the construction of profound emotion in surrounded space and aesthetic environments. She began her career by becoming among the first women in the world to be signed to a major label as a record producer. Her work as an installation artist and film maker forms part of significant permanent collections and has been exhibited and screened worldwide. Sadia has an M.Sc. in Political Science and Economics from the University of London, an M.A. in Design Studies from the University of the Arts (London), and a Ph.D. in Fine Art from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. She is a Senior Industry Fellow, College of Design and Social Context (SoA) at RMIT University, a QS UNiversity Global Top Twenty in Art and Design (2023) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Since 2013, she has been based out of one of five long-term project spaces at Real World Studios in Wiltshire, UK.
Music Signed to EMI as a record producer, Sadia worked largely with the Canadian guitar player David Wilcox producing the albums 'Out of the Woods', 'My Eyes Keep Me In Trouble', 'Bad Reputation', 'Breakfast at the Circus', and 'The Natural Edge', many of which achieved gold or platinum status. She also co-wrote many of the titles on these albums. These recordings formed the basis of a number of 'Greatest Hits' packages, including the platinum-selling ‘The Best of...’ and 'Over Sixty Minutes With’. Sadia has also produced tracks for The Fixx as well as executive production on a number of albums by the multi-instrumentalist and producer Stephen W Tayler. In 1996, Sadia also produced the TUC (Trade Union Congress) ‘Respect: Unite Against Racism’ single ‘Respect’, which featured dozens of international recording artists. The project received national media coverage as well as a commendation from the House of Commons (UK) through the passage of an Early Day Motion (EDM). Sadia was a founding member of the multimedia world fusion project ‘Equa’ with Stephen W. Tayler (Suzanne Vega, Peter Gabriel, Eric Serra, Bob Geldof, Kate Bush), which was signed to Polygram (Australia) and produced the eponymously titled ARIA nominated album ‘Equa’. The Sydney Dance Company under the direction of Graeme Murphy held two works in their permanent repertoire, ‘Unwitting Sight’ (1998) and ‘Cradle Song’ (2001) both choreographed by Wakako Asano to music by Equa. Her work has been sequenced to films starring actors such as Dan Akroyd, Gerard Depardieu and Tom Cruise, to documentaries such as ‘The Corporation’, as well as to films and television programmes by Polygram, Miramax, Interscope, Universal Pictures, Touchstone, CBC (Canada), ABC and Network 7 (Aus.). On immigrating to the United Kingdom Sadia became the first female member of the British Record Producer’s Guild (now MPG) under the chairmanship of Sir George Martin and sat on the Board of Directors for several years under the chairmanship of Sir Robin Millar CBE.
Films and Installations Sadia produced, edited and (working with Stephen W. Tayler as Equa) scored the short film ‘The Noon Gun’. The film received a grant from the British Council, and had its world premiere at the 53rd Melbourne International Film Festival in 2004. It had its UK premiere at the National Museum for Photography, Film and Television (now the National Science and Media Museum) in Bradford in September 2004. It was shortlisted for the BFI's Satyajit Ray Foundation Short Film award, and has been screened globally inclduing the Portobello Film Festival (July 2007), the World Performing Arts Festival (Pakistan, November 2008), Film Mutations (Zagreb, Croatia, December 2008), the Cleveland Museum of Art (2007) and by Tolo TV in Afghanistan. The Tricycle Theatre ("Britain's leading political theatre" The Guardian) screened 'The Noon Gun' as part of their season 'The Great Game: Aspects of Afghanistan' in 2009. Sadia also produced and edited the short 'The End of the Party: Hyde Park 1969', a view of the 60's based on previously unseen footage of the famous first performance by Blind Faith in Hyde Park; produced and edited 'Iggy the Eskimo Girl', a short featuring Syd Barrett’s (Pink Floyd) girlfriend Iggy, ubiquitously and affectionately known in the 1960s as 'Iggy the Eskimo Girl’. With Tayler and Stern, she also directed, edited, produced and sound designed 'San Francisco Redux No. 1', a single-channel installation. These films had their world premiere as part of the curated programme ‘Le Cinema de L’Avant Garde’ at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, France in June 2008. ‘San Francisco Redux No.1’ went on to be screened at Lussas ‘États Généraux du Film Documentaire’ and was the subject of the essay ‘Body to Body: On the Subject of Regrettable Searching’ by the film critic and theoretician Nicole Brenez. 'San Francisco Redux No. 1’ was exhibited as part of ‘Breaking Convention’ at the University of Greenwich in August 2019 as well as the Royal Society of Arts in 2022. Sadia is also the creator of the single channel video installation 'The Memory of Water (Part 1)’ which was acquired by ACMI (The Australian Centre for the Moving Image) internationally significant permanent collection. It featured in the exhibition ‘Proof: The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes’ and also ran as part of looped programming on the internal and external screens in the Federation Square complex for three months over 2004-2005. In 2009, Sadia was awarded a Studio 18 International Artists' Residency at Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne, Australia. During this time she directed her filmed multi-channel installation ‘Metamorphoses in ‘A’ Minor’, with the support of Doug Mitchell of Kennedy, Miller, Mitchell and filmed at their motion capture soundstage at Sydney Gate. The work was supported by a British Council (Australia) Artist’s Grant. In January 2014, Sadia completed ‘All Time and Space Fold Into the Infinite Present (Cataract Gorge)’ a large-scale three channel filmed installation with an accompanying eight channel soundfield. The work premiered at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) Inveresk, Launceston, Tasmania, on January 10th 2014 and ran through March 2nd 2014. It was acquired by QVMAG to form part of their permanent collection. In June 2015, Sadia’s multi-channel installation ‘Ghosts of Noise’ was screened and discussed as part of the international colloquium ‘Les Devenirs Artistiques de L’Information’ at Sorbonne Paris, co-sponsored by Le Bauhaus-Universität Weimar & Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM), the Birmingham Center for Media and Cultural Research, and ELICO Equipe de Recherche de Lyon. ‘Ghosts of Noise’ ran in its full configuration as a multi-channel installation in ‘The Model Citizen’ exhibition, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, in 2019. The work responds to the aesthetics of the information-delivery complex and the 24 hour news cycle. “Model citizenship exists in the tension between compliance and subversion, in the friction between individual integrity and the needs of the state” Sadia, S (2019) The Model Citizen, Melbourne: RMIT Gallery Publications. The exhibition ran from February 8th through March 23rd, and was accompanied by an artist’s talk in which Sadia discussed her life and work with the curator Evelyn Tsitas. In 2017, the original thirty channel installation of ‘Notes To An Unknown Lover’ (Leipzig, 2014) was processed in stereo with 3D audio software creating psychoacoustic sound localisation and distance cues for the exhibition ‘Poetry' at the George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne. In 2018, ‘Metamorphoses in ‘A’ Minor’, was screened in stereo as a short film at the Sarah Lawrence College SLC DanceFilm, USA. Sadia also spoke in defence of fair wages for musicians and sound artists at the Sound Diplomacy Music Cities Convention, Melbourne Arts Centre, April 19th-20th. She was also a Leighton Studios artist in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts, during which she completed her short ‘The Transcendental Suite’. January 2020 marked her return to Tasmania as artist in residence as a guest of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery and the City of Launceston, during which she spent time in the Tarkine in the Tasmanian northwest, a 447,000 hectare relic of the Gondwanaland super-continent of World Heritage importance. During this period she produced her artist’s book ‘The Tarkine’, with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2021, her peer reviewed paper ‘Empirical Methodologies and the Value of Subjectivity in the Analysis of the Experience of Contemporary Experiential Art’ was published in Art and Perception, 9(1), 1–20 (Brill). In July, Sadia’s ‘All Time and Space Fold into the Infinite Present (Cataract Gorge)’ was permanently installed in Gallery Eight at QVMAG’s Royal Park location. It is configured as a three channel HD video, sixteen channel audio installation filling the entirety of Gallery Eight’s forty five foot length. In 2022 Sadia became a member of the BAN British Art Network (Paul Mellon Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art/Tate). She also became Senior Industry Fellow at the School of Art, RMIT Royal Mebourne Institute of Technology, a global Top Twenty in Art and Design in the QS Universities Rankings 2023. From October through December 2022 her works were exhibited in the Kenny Gallery at the RWA Royal Academy West of England in Bristol, UK.
Research Interests From 1992 to 1994 Sadia completed an M.Sc. in Political Science and Economics with a specialisation in Gender Studies. This arose out of her experiences working in commercial recording studios and the status of women in the recording industry and in the workplace. From 1999 to 2000, she pursued a full-time Master’s Degree in Design Studies at Central St. Martin’s, which focused on sensory and experiential design studies, including the formation of sensory memory. In 2019, Sadia completed her Ph.D. in Fine Art at RMIT University in Melbourne, with the support of an IPRS International Postgraduate Research Scholarship, an APA Australian Postgraduate Research Scholarship, and an RTP Research Training award, alongside a number of additional grants. Sadia’s research focuses on a ‘methodology for transcendence’, how and why people experience the epiphanic and profound affect within encompassing installation environments.
Miscellany
Painting and Photography Sadia, S (1989) ’New Faces’, CCA Christies Contemporary Art Berkeley Square Galleries, London. Paintings.
Lecturing and Speaking Engagements include: ‘Media and Ethics’, University of Brunel (Buckinghamshire Campus), guest lecturer; ‘Women in Late 19th & Early 20th Century Art’, Sotheby's institute; 'Gender Issues in Audio Production' AES (Audio Engineering Society) 50th Anniversary Conference, Jacob Javits Centre, New York, keynote. In May 2015, she spoke about collaboration, transferability, and working in the arts, as a guest speaker at the University of London Birkbeck College Arts Symposium. In 2018, Sadia spoke at: Sound Diplomacy’s Music Cities Melbourne Convention; the SCSMI Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image 2018 Conference in Montana, USA on the subject of the ‘The ‘Wow’ Factor and the Loudness Wars’; the Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities Conference 2018 in Canterbury, UK on ‘Catharsis and the Encompassing Environment in Art in the Neo-Digital Age’; and at the VSAC Visual Science of Art 2018 conference in Trieste, Italy, on ‘The Sacred Ground: Enhancing and Constructing the Transcendent State in the Installation Environment’. VSAC is organised as a satellite conference of the ECVP (European Conference on Visual Perception), the leading European conference on visual science. On June 24th 2019 Sadia spoke at the ISEA 2019 25th International Symposium on Electronic Art in Gwangju, South Korea. Her presentation ‘The Illuminated Self’ incorporated her writings surrounding affect in encompassing environments alongside her immersive installation works. The work was made possible through the provision of an Arts Abroad grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Selected Publications (please see ORCID ID) Sadia S (2020) The Tarkine. Artists’ book. Canada Council for the Arts. Sadia, S (2013) Notes to an Unknown Lover. London: Bybrook. ISBN: 978-0957648500
Studio Since January 2013 Sadia has been based out of one of five project spaces at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Box, Wiltshire, UK.
Clips and Shorts
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