Sophie Cape
Revelling in the drama and chaos of nature’s power, Sophie Cape immerses herself directly within the landscape, working with locally found materials and responding intuitively to place. Her practice is grounded in physical engagement, where the body becomes an active participant alongside the unpredictable forces of the elements.
Through this embodied approach, Cape seeks out the tensions between survival and decay, beauty and horror, exploring the fragile thresholds that define both the natural world and the human condition. Her work emerges as an instinctual and authentic act of expression, embracing imperfection, erosion, and transformation as essential forces. By allowing materials to weather, fracture, and evolve, she reveals the poetry embedded within change.
Sophie’s practice reflects a deep attentiveness to the power held within the landscape and our reciprocal relationship to it. Her works do not attempt to tame or aestheticise nature, but rather honour its rawness, unpredictability, and emotional charge. In doing so, she invites viewers to encounter the land, and themselves, through a lens of vulnerability, resilience, and reverence.
Cape trained at the National Art School and has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. She has been a finalist in numerous art prizes and winner of the 2014 Portia Geach Memorial Prize, the 2014 Paddington Art Prize, the 2015 Geelong Art prize and the 2025 Hadley's Art Prize. Sophie's works are held in collections both nationally and internationally. They include; Macquarie Bank Emerging Artist Collection, Sydney Bathurst Art Gallery, NSW Geelong Art Gallery, China Arts Foundation, Xucun International Art Commune, Pat Corrigan Collection, The Private Museum in Singapore.