Sarah Roberts' work explores the effects of having a carer at a young age on childhood, as well as the peculiar experience of being ‘sick-adjacent.’

The leaflets by the gallery entrance, offering support for carers and those grieving, hint at the profound emotional weight of Sarah Roberts’ latest work.

Stepping into her installation, Sick (A Note from 40 Sandilands Road and Other Stories), visitors are enveloped in an unsettling green—intended as a calming, healing hue, yet one that carries a different meaning for those who have cared for an ill or disabled loved one, as Roberts has.

She describes the inspiration behind the piece as “that feeling of being out of step.”

“Being between the sick and the well—it’s like I didn’t fully belong to either. I think many people with care experience feel that way. You’re not one or the other. You’re living the experience of a sick person, but it’s not your own.”

As a child, Roberts intermittently cared for her father, who lost his sight and passed away when she was 14. Her sister also faced severe diabetes complications, at one point being sectioned due to a misdiagnosed eating disorder, leading to extended hospital stays.

“I never saw myself as a young carer,” Roberts reflects. “I just saw myself as someone who cares. One moment, you’re handling a urinal bedpan; the next, you’re at a rave.

“So I didn’t have this bleak, joyless childhood. But there was always this shadow of care, like a monkey on my back. Sometimes it felt heavy, weighing me down. Other times, it was small, even endearing, giving me a sense of resilience and buoyancy.”

Roberts is renowned for her bold installations, which have been exhibited in London, Switzerland, Bristol, Southampton, and her home city of Leeds.

One of her most recognized works, Everything’s Mustard, is an intense yellow spectacle that demands attention, inspired by the experience of clearing out her late mother’s bungalow.

Sick continues the uncanny, thought-provoking style she is known for. Visitors move through a series of rooms where the boundaries between hospitals, home, and the outside world blur.

Glossy, acid-green porcelain snakes coil on shelves and dangle from rails, as if they’ve slithered away from the Rod of Asclepius, infiltrating a young girl’s bedroom adorned with purple dolphins, sparkly stickers, and cats.

A disturbingly realistic blown-glass vessel, resembling a lung, sits among everyday household objects. Equally unsettling is the distorted 1990s soundtrack—featuring tracks like You Gotta Be by Des’ree and Music Sounds Better With You by Stardust—glitching unexpectedly and interspersed with the sterile sounds of a hospital.

Scattered throughout the installation are absurd porcelain food creations, inspired by vintage cookbooks from the University of Leeds archive. Roberts notes, “Many of these books contain strict guidelines on how to care for ‘invalids’—what to feed them, how to make it appealing. Some of the plates depict elaborate, sculptural meals that no overworked carer in the ’80s would have had the time to make.”

The work captures a world visible only to the sick—or, as Roberts describes, the “sick-adjacent”: those who are physically well but exist in close proximity to illness and the medical system.

“I’m fascinated by the strange guilt that comes with being a sick-adjacent person,” she explains. “You’re well-bodied, yet you carry a sense of shame about a situation that isn’t anyone’s fault.”

Sick merges the mundane with the escapist. It reflects Roberts’ imagined childhood bedroom—complete with bunk beds she always wanted but never had—alongside memories of her actual teenage escapes to the flashing lights and noisy arcade halls of Tywyn, the seasonal seaside town in mid-Wales where she grew up. Roberts’ work is deeply rooted in research. Collaborating with artist and weaver Hannah Robson, she created intricate jacquard textiles inspired by 1909 illustrations of the pneumonia virus, discovered in the medical museum archive at the University of Leeds.

Reflecting on themes of longing and displacement, she recalls, “You’re staring out the window, watching someone else’s Topshop dress flutter in the wind, wishing you weren’t trapped in the intense poverty that so often accompanies these experiences. There’s a deep yearning for another life, for a sense of belonging.”

She acknowledges the complex emotions tied to her upbringing. “There’s perhaps a fleeting resentment when you grow up with that kind of shadow over your life. But at the same time, I know my practice is entirely shaped by it.”

[If not for that experience,] what would I have made work about?”

Sick (A Note from 40 Sandilands Road and Other Stories) opens on Wednesday, April 2, at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery in Leeds and runs until July 19. Admission is free.