Sandy Edwards

Sandy Edwards has been concentrating on going through her archive over the last few years.She has been supporting artists that she worked with under the ARTHERE title. In 2025 she held and exhibition at the University of Western Sydney. Sandy Edwards: A Backwards Glance at Australian Feminism was drawn from her early feminist work from the 1970’s to the 1980’s.

Sandy Edwards is an independent Photography Curator based in Sydney, Australia. She founded Arthere in 2008, a new gallery model that provided services to photographers - consultation, mentoring, curating, venue procuring, exhibition production. Arthere has produced over 100 exhibitions across multiple art spaces exhibiting new and established photographic artists. Sandy was Curator at Stills Gallery from 1991until 2017, when it closed. She was Codirector for fifteen years, with Director Kathy Freedman.

In public art she has been Curator of Australian Life the successful public photography competition/exhibition as part of Sydney’s Art & About since its inception in 2002. She has had an ongoing association with Head On Photo Festival, Australia’s premier photography festival. She curated the Kings Cross Photography Competition and Prize in 2011 and 2012. She curated Photographic Light boxes (with Linda Slutzkin) in 2000 for the Arrivals Corridors Sydney Airport, 2000, Art Program. As a curator Sandy has a long history of supporting documentary photography in Australia. Her experience ranges widely across Photo Art. She has judged many photography prizes and opened many exhibitions. She has an ongoing presence in women’s and gender issues in photography and is actively involved in Indigenous issues. She was actively involved with ACP Friends to continue the legacy of the highly important Australian Centre for Photography which closed in 2019 due to financial difficulties .She has a long history as a photographer starting her career in 1977, her specialty being portraiture, documentary and the arts. Throughout the 1980's she taught photography at Sydney University's Tin Sheds. 

Solo exhibitions as an exhibiting artist include Welcome to Brewarrina 1990 and Paradise is a Place 1996. Paradise is a Place was published as a book, with Gillian Mears, by Random House 1997. Her exhibition Indelible, was at Stills Gallery in 2004. Other exhibition work includes Momiji, An Autumn in Japan, with Stephen Jones (Gallery East, 2001) and First Love, in Close Relations, Australian Centre for Photography, 1999. Commissions received include CSR Sugar Refinery Project (1978), Parliament House Photography Commission (1986), and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (After 200 Years Project ),1988. Her work is published and collected in various institutions including the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of NSW.