Valparaíso Wear and Tear

Sarah Walker

16 April - 29 May 2026

Oliver Sears Gallery is pleased to present Valparaíso Wear and Tear, a new body of work by Sarah Walker, that has emerged following a residency in Chile in 2025.

Walker, long associated with paintings rooted in the flora and landscape of Beara in West Cork, here turns her attention to the charged urban fabric of Valparaíso. Known for her sensitive use of line and colour in depictions of wild grasses and flowers, the artist encountered in the Chilean port city a ready-made language of both. Its steep streets, corrugated facades and painted surfaces offered a visual rhythm at once unfamiliar and unexpectedly akin to her native environment.

It was in Valparaíso that Walker began a decisive shift in process. Working with watercolour on paper, she introduced tearing, layering and the application of vertical bands of masking tape. These elements, both formal and intuitive, echo the physical character of the city itself; its repetitions, interruptions and improvised repairs. The act of tearing and reassembling becomes as deliberate as the drawn line, recalling her earlier use of the palette knife while opening a more fragmentary and responsive approach.

The presence of tape is central. It both obscures and reveals, muting colour while allowing it to persist beneath. In this, Walker finds a quiet metaphor: a sense of precarious cohesion, of surfaces held together despite visible strain. The works appear fragile, yet resist collapse. Colour, held in tension, persists as a quietly optimistic force, refusing to be muted by erosion, the wear and tear.

This interplay between concealment and vitality reflects the character of Valparaíso itself, a city marked by decay and renewal, where layers of history remain visible in every surface. The San Francisco of South America, a once bustling and wealthy trading port, home to the Chilean navy and congress shares a geological vulnerability with its north American twin. Walker’s compositions, at times densely constructed, carry a restless energy that mirrors the pace and complexity of the streetscape. Yet they are equally grounded in a slower, meditative engagement with line, particularly in the accompanying canvas works where corrugated forms are rendered through the measured action of paint and palette knife, depicting the brightly coloured iron roofs and facades that construct the haphazard, precarious fabric of this hillside city.

While the exhibition marks a departure in material and context, it remains closely aligned with Walker’s enduring concerns. Whether tracing the delicate structures of wild flora in Beara or the man made environment of a South American port city, her work continues to centre on the articulation of line as both descriptive and generative.

Among the subjects that recur are the monumental Gomero trees encountered in the city centre. Here, Walker extends her new methodology to organic form, constructing these living structures through torn, layered paper rather than through the painterly language of her earlier tree studies. The result is a compelling synthesis: trees that feel both assembled and alive, rooted yet provisional.

Valparaíso Wear and Tear marks a significant development in Sarah Walker’s practice. The works carry with them the immediacy and curiosity of discovery, while remaining true to her methodology, the rigorous engagement of material, place and process.

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