Sophia FRANKS

Sophia L Franks is an emerging Gold Coast based artist creating temporal installations and sculptures from bio-based and organic materials. Working within the fields of Bio-art and Eco-art, Sophia explores the use of non-conventional materials, presenting them in unique ways.

As part of her arts practice, Sophia creates a biomaterial which is used to critique and investigate the ethical and material value systems that underpin our relationship with the natural environment. In doing so, her artworks encompass current environmental issues surrounding climate change, preservation, consumption and wastage in the age of the Anthropocene. Sophia deeply considers the impact that she, as an individual, has on nature and attempts not to sacrifice its health and wellbeing in order to create her artworks.

Key to her practice is the feedback loop of the works created, knowing the life cycles of the materials she uses and their implications directly upon our fragile environment. Because of this and her ecological concerns, many of her artworks eventually deteriorate and biodegrade. By appropriating nature, Sophia is promoting aesthetic and poetic expressions that stimulate dialogue about sustainability and the interrelationships in our ecological systems in order to alter human behaviour and boost a conscious relation between humankind and the natural environment.

Sophia completed her Bachelor of Art and Design at Southern Cross University in 2020 and has recently been an Artist in Residence at the Level up Studio + gallery, City of Gold Coast.