Sharon Zwi

Sharon was born and grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has lived in Glebe since she arrived in Australia in 1982.

She began her studies in Johannesburg but then moved to Reading University in the U.K where she studied art. She then did a postgraduate diploma in printmaking at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. She then moved to Sydney in 1982 where she did a 4-year part-time photography course at TAFE in Sydney, and in 1995-6 a postgraduate diploma in museum studies at the University of Sydney.

She has been a participating member of Sydney Printmakers since 1994, exhibiting at least annually. She has participated in group printmaking shows at least once annually.

Hear early work focused on life in Apartheid South Africa using photography, screen printing and linocut. Her more recent work has been more varied telling family origin stories and focusing on current issues and subjects. 

This exhibition is her first solo largely Printmaking exhibition, and it covers work she did from the 1980s in England until now. Her earliest work was photographic screen prints. She then worked doing linocuts and Japanese woodcut prints. More recently she has begun to work on Digital prints, using her photographs and also drawing into the images using a Wacom tablet. Many have a photographic element and others are only drawn by hand. She works using Layers. It is quite similar to layering screen prints, except with more control of the opacity or translucency of each layer. When complete, she gets them printed by a master printer. 

Sharon has had several solo photography exhibitions. Her most recent solo exhibition was Phillip Island Landscapes – off Norfolk Island, in 2024, which was exhibited with HeadOn at the Muse Gallery, TAFE Ultimo. That was an exhibition of the striking landscapes of the island, showing the regeneration of the landscape and its recovery over the decades since the 1980s when work on the island to regenerate the landscape began and the last rabbit was eradicated.

Her previous photography exhibition was called Time Exposures: 60 Life Portraits, was held at Fisher Library, at the University of Sydney, as part of the HeadOn  Festival in 2013. The life portraits were black and white grids of photographs showing the life of each person from childhood to the present time.

Sharon has two adult sons, a cat and a very patient, supportive partner. 

Sharon has worked as a photographer for 16 years in the Electron Microscope Unit at the University of Sydney; a photographer at the State Library of NSW; taught composition and photographic theory in the photography course at TAFE. She was a museum volunteer for many years at the Macleay Museum and the University of Sydney Art Gallery, War Memorial Arch, both now incorporated in the Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney; the Australian Museum; and the Powerhouse Museum.

• Dates: 26 March until 31 March 2026, and will be open from 11am - 6pm. 

• Opening: Saturday 28th March from 4pm - 7pm