Sara Habgood (b. 1964) and Peter Filler (b. 1959)
Habgood Filler is the collaborative practice of Sara Habgood and Peter Filler, who both studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths’ College during the celebrated period that produced the Young British Artists, including Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Angus Fairhurst.
Peter trained and worked as an illustrator before Goldsmiths, where he concentrated on sculpture and was among the first students in decades to make large-scale sculptural work. Sara has worked as a painter for many years, and her work has been exhibited and collected widely in the UK and internationally.
Drawing on their backgrounds in fine art, sculpture, illustration and design, they create sculptural reliefs that occupy the territory between painting and sculpture. Built from layers of carved wood, plaster and pigment, the works explore the interplay of abstract form, colour, texture and shadow. With a strong architectural presence, they invite the viewer to experience them as both paintings and three-dimensional objects.
Materials
Working with layered timber, sculptural composites and mineral-based plaster, the artists create subtly modelled and pigmented reliefs that explore the relationship between abstraction, architecture and the changing qualities of light and shadow.
The Work
The sculptural reliefs of Habgood Filler occupy a space between painting, sculpture and architecture. Built from successive layers of carved and modelled materials, the compositions create an illusion of shifting planes and fragmented perspectives.
The work draws on a variety of influences, among them the artists’ travels through Colombia and their interest in its pre-Columbian cultures. The abstracted forms, enigmatic faces and symbolic qualities of ancient artefacts find echoes in the reliefs, not as literal references, but as part of a broader exploration of memory, identity and the enduring language of sculptural form.
There is also a dialogue with modernist abstraction, where geometry and organic shapes coexist, and where the boundaries between the figurative and the abstract become deliberately ambiguous.
