New Work 12 Oct 12

Weathered at Tweed River Gallery

I am very excited to be exhibiting at the exquisite Tweed River Art Gallery with my great friend, colleague and collaborator Nicola Moss . The exhibition runs concurrently with the travelling exhibition of works from the Ann Lewin collection making it well worth the trip.

I can't wait to see the work Nicola and I created last year while we were in residence at Montsalvat finally hung in the space for which it was created.

I'm also delighted that  artist and photographer Carl Warner , who used to document my work when I lived in Queensland and whose work I greatly admire will be opening our exhibition.

House Keeping

As the heavy rain continues there is no opportunity to make new work with sun exposed cyanotypes so I have been doing some neglected 'housekeeping'. Last week I did my tax and I have been adding images of older works to my website. These works had to be deleted a few years ago when I had less space on the site and should have been reinstated last year.
In 2006 I had an exhibition at Metro Arts in Brisbane. The works shown in Cactus Milk were a departure from my usual concerns with identity and displacement and were inspired by my love of country music.

Susan Buret, Skin Deep, 2006, Gouache on Cut Tibetan Paper, 150 cm x 3500 cm.

Skin Deep was one of the works included in the exhibition and revisiting it makes me want to make more large scaled paper works.

New Work

Susan Buret Penelope Series 2 #1, 2012, Cyanotype with Gouache Additions, 55.5 cm x 38 cm.

I am in the studio trying to listen to the radio above the din caused by the relentless heavy rain on the corrugated iron roof and feeling guilty about posting trite comments about arks on facebook and not posting often enough here or on the weather blog, Barometer of Moods, I share with Nicola Moss. 

I've been working more on the cyanotypes in the Penelope Series and trying to make larger works. I really prefer to work on a larger scale, not to seek attention, but because I think that this allows a sense of architectural engagement, visceral rather than narrative, when works are closer to the size of the human body. I like the feeling of being drawn into the picture frame and try to achieve this with the larger works.

I still remember making my first large work, moving from 1 m square canvases to 1.8m sq and discovering that it not only took longer but that I had to find ways of reaching the top and bottom of the canvas and moving the unwieldy thing around! And then the image produced had a completely different energy to the smaller works. 

The move to a larger scale with works on paper which must be dipped in water baths brings with it a whole new series of challenges. I now have a series of wading pools and a large supply of MDF boards and wait until the sun obliges to test the techniques. I'm still overcoming technical problems and hope to post a succesfully completed work soon.

Back in the Studio. New Year. New Work.

Susan Buret, Untitled(as yet), 2012 from the Inequality Proposition Series, Acrylic on Linen, 70 cm x 100 cm.

Circumstances largely beyond my control have kept from the studio, and this blog, for most of the latter part of 2011. 

When I returned to the studio I resolved to start blogging again and this raised heaps of questions. 

Should this blog only focus on my work and if so should I include new work which may form part of my next exhibition? If I show most of the work on the blog the exhibition will hold no surprises.

Should I talk about personal matters on a blog which is a professional platform? In my last post I mentioned the fact that personal matters do often, without any conscious decisions, inform the work I make.

The questions still remain unanswered so I am beginning this years blogging with a new work. I have decided to return to the geometric works begun in 2006/7 as part of the in her high heels series. I enjoy  making these works as of resolving the image is very different to the repetitive process of making the collage works.