Sarah Bennett was born in Bristol and graduated in BA Fine Art (sculpture) from Exeter College of Art and Design in 1980. She completed a practice-based PhD at Plymouth University in 2010.

Sarah produces artworks that both attest to and reveal systems embedded in various institutional settings, in particular the institution of psychiatry, through reference to historical archives, museum displays and architectural sites. Using re-enactment as a key artistic method to critique such sites, she has produced artistic research in which the artworks are developed as situated knowledge through sculpture, mixed media, photography, video, and drawing.

Sarah has over 35 years of higher education experience in art schools including continuing to supervise doctoral students, and currently she chairs accreditation panels for art academies throughout Europe. Sarah has published on public art, as well as her own artistic research, in books and journals, and has given conference papers on art practice in relation to cultural geography, visual anthropology and architecture in New Zealand, Canada, USA, Italy, as well as the UK.

Her studio and home are in Devon, UK.