Susanna

Text on Method 1st Draft (March 20 2013)

Gently subversive and often desire-driven, my work is part rational critique part emotional homage. Often focusing on the idea of the obsessive (but useless!) archive and its subsequent sentimentalities, through my practice I aim to confront popular and personal histories with both humour and sincerity, following the lives of ideas rather than focusing on simply the start or the finish. Most recently these concerns have manifested themselves in bodies of work that are linked by their dealings with the idea of idiosyncratic collections inspired by various iterations of the everyday.

One notion that comes up often in my work is that of a popular or public grief, which in the past I have used to sort through my own sadness or trauma. I often turn to collecting to make sense of things, and examples of these archival tendencies are evident in two works, where I comb/have combed various corners of popular culture for hints of feeling.

Country War Songs (2011) is a small songbook printed in red, white and blue that contains the lyrics to contemporary country war songs written post 9/11. The thirty songs presented in this volume vary in theme from anger and retaliation, to sorrow and loss, to criticism and calls for peace. This collection provides a record and a unique view of a nation's artists processing a tragedy through popular culture and music, which is at one problematic and comforting, heartfelt and disturbing. Country music has always held my fascination, but considering it's right-wing leanings, simplistic narratives and sexist implications, I've felt rather ashamed of that fact. However, sometimes, I am still tricked, touched, and end up in tears as I listen to country radio; this moment, where something funny and far away becomes sad and relatable, is of great interest to me.

In Contenders (2011-ongoing), I continue to collect screenshots from the last episode of every season of popular reality TV dating show The Bachelor, each image depicting the moment when the losing of the final two women is told she is not The One. Some grief-stricken, some angry, some humiliated, the women of Contenders play with the public/private notions of heartache, resisting the joke while telling it themselves. The chosen images of from each season are edited together into a film. As a new season airs, a new screenshot is taken and added to the end of the film.

In You Are All I’ve Loved (2012-ongoing), I draw more on personal experience rather than that of the world at large, though I am interested in it's relatability as a framework. Here, I am completing life-size monochromatic portraits of my past lovers according to my synesthetic associations with their person, distilling memory to a single chromatic essence as a way of untangling and dealing with sadness in a manageable way. The titles are numbers, according to their chronological appearance in my life. Each is two feet across, with the height dictated by the height of the actual man himself.

I was recently talking to an artist who said that embarrassment and nervous laughter are very good places to start with a work. I think that humour and embarrassment are sort of linked and that's something that I think about and value. I came from this city where the work that was being made was very cool and devoid of feeling and emotion, very academic and I think that I’ve been reacting to that in sort of a slow way, but its definitely there.

I used to think my practice was about making or poking fun-- but looking back, I see it was just an excuse. I realize now that I need no justification, I am simply making art about things I like, and I aim to not only convey that desire, but pass it on it to the viewer as well.