Jo Sabey

Jo Sabey is an Australian visual artist residing in the waterfront village of Metung situated on the Gippsland Lakes in Eastern Victoria. Her work is informed by the spirit of her home and studio which is surrounded by a vast body of water reflecting an ever changing canopy of sky. Long beach walks gathering treasure, abundant birdlife, the language of water and boats and all that is experienced when living in the face of the weather provide inspiration for a practice that has spanned 40 years. Within her oeuvre, Jo explores a number of mediums ranging from printmaking and large acrylic works on canvas to finely detailed coloured pencil drawings — often accompanied by poems arising as a response to the work in progress. Collage and assemblage are a recurring element giving the work a tactile quality linking it to its origin. 

Jo Sabey was born in Adelaide, South Australia. In 1969, Jo was awarded a Diploma of Art Teaching from the South Australian School of Art and Western Teachers College (now the University of South Australia - UniSA). She taught at Secondary Schools in Adelaide and Melbourne before moving to Brisbane in 1972 where she gained experience in antiques and interior design. In 1974, Jo returned to Melbourne to work as a freelance Interior Designer. During this time, she pursued her love of painting and writing poetry participating in many solo and group shows between 1974 and 2004. 

Her exhibition work has featured in prominent galleries including Editions Gallery in Melbourne, Greenhill Galleries in Adelaide, Barry Stern Gallery in Sydney and Hermon & Hermon in Melbourne. She has also exhibited with Alvin Gallery in Hong Kong. Jo’s work is in many private and corporate collections including the National Gallery of Australia (NGA). The NGA houses a range of her works including Pages from a Beach Journal — an artist’s book of screen prints and accompanying poems — purchased with the assistance of the Gordon Darling Australia Pacific Print Fund. 

In November 2021, Jo was invited to participate in The Thinking Eye, a group show with selected artists at Signal Point Gallery, Goolwa, South Australia. This exhibition paid homage to what is described as The Golden Years — a period during the 1960s and early 1970s at the South Australian School of Art.

Jo will be the Feature Artist at the Gallery of Small Things (GOST) in Canberra in June 2022