:: Sam Oster :: Biography ::
Sam Oster is a photo-media artist working across a range of creative and commercial applications. She lectures in photography at the Centre for Creative Photography, and runs a photographic studio Silvertrace at Cog Creative Space in Norwood (Adelaide). Sam exhibits regularly in group and solo shows. She was invited to exhibit in the core program of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale in 2009, where she showed both still and moving-image work alongside International and Australian artists. Her work was featured on the cover of the Art Almanac in June 2010. Sam has most recently shown at Art Images Gallery (April 2014), and Shimmer Photoraphy Biennial (2012), where she showed new lenticular (3D) still life work, alongside moving image work. The moving image work has been acquired by the Noarlunga Arts Centre.
Sam’s photographic portrait series of multicultural personalities in South Australia was published in Cardinal Points, by Wakefield Press with Nexus Multicultural Arts Centre in 2001. Sam was Artist in Residence at Duckspool Photographic Centre in England in 2001, and her work toured with Country Art SA’s exhibition ‘Snapshot – SA female Photographers’ in 2002/2003. Sam was awarded The British Journal of Photography Venture Portrait Award in 2003, and her work was shortlisted for the Head On Portrait Prize in 2009 and again in 2010. In 2010 she was nominated in Capture Magazine’s ‘Australia’s Top photographers’ in the Portrait Category. She was a commissioned artist for the SBS Federation Square Art Award, and her work has been broadly published. Her typology of irons (Apparatus Electralia Planus) featured on the front cover of the Australian Art Almanac in May 2010.
Across a 17-year career as a stills photographer in the film and entertainment industries, she has worked on a range of feature films, tv series, short films and documentaries, photographing well known personalities like Natalie Imbruglia, Hugo Weaving, and Toni Collette. Sam also works in theatre and dance, producing a range of commissioned work for the creative arts industry. Her recent South Australian performing Arts clients include Ausdance SA, Restless Dance Theatre, Ladykillers, Flugle Theatre Company, Windmill Performing Arts, Carclew, Unreasonable Adults, Beat Company, and many independent artists. Sam is a member of the Australian Institute of Professional Photography, and has been presented with various awards as part of the state print awards.
Sam produces moving-image work as an extension of her arts practice. She directed the short screen dance piece ‘Circuit’ with local dancer and choreographer Felecia Hick in 2005, after which she received funding in 2007 for a project to work with Sue Healey (Sydney) to develop a dance film work, ‘Mute: Stark: Rich’, with 3 local dancers. Sam has since made ‘Teacup Ballet’, a stop motion screen dance, and ‘String Theory’, a timelapse work with dancer Billie Cook. Sam was selected as a curator-in-residence at the Media Resource Centre in 2005 and presented South Australia’s inaugural dance film festival ‘Cinetic’ as part of the residency. She has since curated the South Australian program of the Reeldance Film Festival in 2008, and continues to work in this emerging field. Sam’s conceptual moving image work was selected to show in SALA Moving Image 2005 at Artspace in the Adelaide Festival Centre, and she has since continued to work with the moving image across a range of exhibitions, including 2 new pieces in her recent exhibition ‘Short Circuit’. She has explored multiple camera array sequences, applying 'Bullet Time' techniques to her screen dance work, integrating this footage with timelapse and video to explore and analyse movement.
Sam's most recent moving image work has been a commission by Flinders Medical Centre's Arts in Health Department, of 4 short timelapse-based films for the Windows Project 2012. She also worked as a timelapse artist for FMC in 2011 for the project '24 Hours at FMC'.
:: Sam Oster :: sam@silvertrace.com :: 0414 939768 :: www.silvertrace.com ::