Sarah Sandler
Updated — 16/02/2026

The Landscape is Still Tonight

The Landscape is Still Tonight, 2025
Glazed sandstone, pigment, Rhone river water, welded steel, found timber, various dimensions
Photos: © Alexandre Bagdassarian

A series of eleven bas-reliefs in glazed sandstone, set within timber and steel frames. The ceramic works reflect on contamination, toxicity, and resistance in the use of herbicides and pesticides on vegetal life.

Inspired by an incident in which the artist was nearly sprayed with glyphosate on a nature reserve—a chemical still legally used in Australia and in industrial contexts in France. Each sandstone composition blends chemical structures (including DDT, Lindane, Heptachlor, and Dieldrin, commonly used in industrial herbicides and pesticides) with vegetal and organic forms. Neither form dominates; instead, they seamlessly merge suggesting a landscape reshaped through chemical intervention.

The glazes evoke the vaporisation of toxic sprays, with variations in density and pooled synthetic colour suggesting drifting droplets—mimicking the largely invisible dispersal of chemicals across agricultural fields and protected landscapes alike.