Exhibition detail | Sanja Pahoki

"I grew up in Deer Park where Kororoit Creek runs directly through the suburb. So I feel like I know it fairly well. At least the section of the creek that runs through Deer Park. It didn’t seem very wide or deep, even for a little kid. But still there were only a few sections where you could confidently cross over without getting wet. I remember the creek as unruly with muddy embankments. I used to go down there to catch tadpoles in glass jars hoping they would turn into frogs. I kept these jars on my desk in my bedroom and would peer in looking for a transformation. I even placed a piece of paper onto of the jars to prevent the frogs from jumping out when tadpoles turned into frogs. They never became frogs, the tadpoles always died and I ended up chucking the water out into the backyard." - Sanja Pahoki

Sanja Pahoki was born in Osijek, Croatia and migrated to Melbourne in the early 1970s. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in psychology and philosophy and completed a MFA at the Victorian College of the Arts and presently lectures there. Her work has been exhibited both nationally at the Heidi Museum of Modern Art, and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, and internationally in Japan, Shanghai, Vienna, Berlin, Paris and Rotterdam. Pahoki was a committee member of Kings Artist Run Initiative and has done residencies in Reykjavik, Iceland, and Helsinki, Finland. She is represented by Sarah Scout, Melbourne.

Read more about Sanja's work from Gertrude Contemporary