Sonja Porcaro is a mid-career artist based in Tarntanya/Adelaide, South Australia, working predominantly in sculpture and installation and more recently incorporating sound. Porcaro uses everyday objects- including found objects- and humble materials to create restrained and poetic works, often investigating notions of memory (drawing on her Italian migrant heritage), uncertainty and the fluidity of language, representation and meaning. In combining intimate, hand crafted objects and materials with more robust structures and often employing repetition, Porcaro also acknowledges and reworks minimalist traditions- with particular consideration to gender- the formal aspects of her work combining with the personal, gestural and sensorial. In undertaking various residencies, Porcaro’s work has also investigated the mutable relationships between given ‘sites’ and their cultural, social and historical associations.
Since graduating from the South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia (First Class Honours) in 1993, Porcaro has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally, in spaces such as the Art Gallery of South Australia, the South Australian School of Art Gallery, the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, the Experimental Art Foundation (SA), the Australian Centre for Photography (Vic), the Performance Space and Artspace (NSW), Viafarini (Milan, Italy) and Studio Kura (Itoshima, Japan). Porcaro has also exhibited in many independent and artist run spaces in both South Australia and New South Wales.
Porcaro has undertaken many residencies throughout her career, having received funding from both Arts SA and the Australia Council for the Arts. Residencies internationally include Studio Kura (Itoshima, Japan) the Australia Council Residential Studio (Milan, Italy) and the Athens School of Art Studio (Delphi Annex, Greece) nationally at the College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales (Porcaro lived and worked in Sydney from 1996-1999) and in South Australia at Sauerbier House, The Mill, George Street Studios and the South Australian School of Art.
Porcaro’s work has been collected by the Art Gallery of South Australia, the College of Fine Art, NSW and is in private collections in Australia.