Margarita Sampson’s sculptural work is often a response to close, meditative observation of natural patterns and cycles – flowers opening and closing, leaves unfurling, shoots breaking through the soil,  weather fluctuations. Her childhood on Norfolk Island was spent often outdoors and barefoot,  moving between the ocean, the beach and the forest. Although she received a B.A & M.F.A from UNSW majoring in painting, Margarita turned to sculpture soon after as a way to more immediately engage the body and the senses.  Her first sculptural work was created in response to a call-out for the inaugural Sculpture by the Sea in 1997, her second work won the SxSea People’s Choice the following year, and she has gone on to exhibit with SxSea 10 more times, often as an invited artist. 

Margarita is known by her peers as a ‘materialist’
– exploring the properties of a wide range of different materials including textiles, recycled plastics, wood, steel, silver( she’s also a jeweller), rubber and found objects in both large and small works. She enjoys finding the nature of each material, and teasing out what it will and won’t do, with an enquiring ‘beginner’s mind’. Wishing to work in larger steel construction, she learnt welding and automotive
spray-painting.

Her sculptural works have been included in (amongst others) the Waterhouse Art Prize (winner, Object section) 2012,  and was a finalist in the Wynne Prize 2013, Fisher’s Ghost Art Prize 2015, The Blake Prize 2016 & 2022, Sculpture in the Vineyard 2022, Heysen Landscape Prize 2022 & was awarded the Hillview Indoor Sculpture Award  in 2018. Her work has just finished touring for 2 years with the 2020 “Tensions” Tamworth Textile Triennial.  Her work is held in private & public collections & was commissioned for Sculpture at Barangaroo in 2016 and Canberra Floriade in 2017.