Exibition

My next exhibition is a joint exhibition with Rob Andrews at Percolator Gallery, Paddington in Brisbane.

No Ordinary Bliss

We'd love to see you there.

Opening night is 31 August! Not long now.

Birds Nests

Iluwanti Ken and Mary Katajuku Pan, South Australian weaving artists, submitted the sublime Bird Nests as their entry in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards.

Image retrieved from the ABC


I find the secret insides of caves compelling, like the secret undersides of pavement cracks. Crevices and interstices.

The Birds Nests of Iluwanti Ken and Mary Katajuku Pan speak of deep familiarity with the life around them. I'm sitting up at Barney View, which still  feels so foreign to me, and thinking how much quiet sitting it would take to build that familiarity. I'm like a fish out of water.

Craft nylon, on the other hand (a recent garage sale find) is touchingly familiar. Quintessentially me, Mt Gravatt. With profound apologies to Iluwanti Ken and Mary Katajuku Pan ...

Birds Nest
2017
Sue George
craft nylon, 120 x 100 x 100 mm

No Ordinary Bliss

I have a collection of pavement images collected over the years, while walking. This one from walks last year on the way to work, Annerley to George Street. 

Brisbane 2016. 2017. Sue George. Digital photograph. 20 x 29 cm

They celebrate the quiet, unexpected joys of the urban walk.  Hemingway's  'intoxicating romance of the unusual' enjoyed in the everyday.

For this year's exhibition I'm digging into the pavement archive. Painting, re-imagining and re-photographing pavement shots to accentuate the cracks and the signs of life in the concrete landscape.

Havana 2017. 2017. Sue George. Photograph of painted print.. 20 x 29 cm

Photos of photos

Playing with photos of photos, altered and re-imagined as they are re-photographed. I'm using an extensive archive of pavement images from around the world. This one from Rome 2016.

Yucatan

Limo cut inspired by the birds here at Hacienda Uxmal. Ready to print at the Graphic Bakery tomorrow. 

Ethical consumption

Thinking about trickle down economics and my own unethical consumption.

 

Art as protest

I'm responding to the confronting ethical questions which you can't avoid when you live in the Caymans. The gaping chasm between the haves and the have nots. The cult of excess. Pollution and waste but also the spending choices. Overconsumption but also thoughtless consumption.

Am reminded of the Supertramp album, Crisis? What crisis?

Greetings from the Caymans

2017

Sue George

digital photograph

Pavement as pedestrian fracture

Playing with collage and photographs of photographs. Here using my photos of pavement cracks (Cayman Island, but universal) and photographing again, over found images (magazines, found photos, postcards).

Yes. It really looks like this.

This is popular souvenir slogan here, used on everything from tote bags to fridge magnets.

It provided a perfect juxtaposition for images of the plastic waste problem. It's inadvisable, I think, to comment on places and situations with which you are unfamiliar. Is it my place to simplify a complex issue as a postcard comment. Perhaps a generic image, taking away the Cayman Islands tag, would be more acceptable.

Taste of Cayman

Just a small taste of life here on the Caymans. I am looking at existing postcards and re-creation of promotional postcards to reflect something of the realities.

I found a bundle of postcards left over from the Taste of Cayman festival last weekend and wanted to capture something of that experience. We went to the festival and found, for $CI40 per person you got 12 tickets which bought you two glasses of wine. That's something like $A25 per glass and while it was promoted as an island festival it certainly wasn't somewhere that everyone could afford to go. I felt I had walked into yet another staged production.

There was also an article in the paper this week, bemoaning the job opportunities for Caymanians and I noticed, in the classified notices, the poor pay and conditions offered jobs in hospitality. $4.50-9.00 per hour, split shifts and a standard 45 hour week. It seemed such a contradiction to the image they were promoting at the festival.

I used the Taste of Caymans postcards to provide a window into real life for Caymanians working in the hospitality sector serving wealthy locals and visitors.

Taste of Cayman #1 Willing to work weekends

Sue George

2017

altered found postcard and collage, 148.5x105mm

Taste of Cayman #1 Willing to work shifts, weekends and public holidays

Sue George

2017

altered found postcard and collage, 148.5x105mm

Sending out an SOS

Walked out this morning. Don't believe what I saw.

Cayman Brac, 2017.

Resort world

First impressions.

Really, this could be anywhere. We live in a resort. They call them condos. It's called Crescent Point and it could be Crescent Point Apartments, Coolloongatta or Crescent Point Apartments, Trinity Beach. It's seaside holiday sterile.

Concrete stairs. Lifts. White tiles. Bright green lawns and trimmed hedges. Raked sand.

Yesterday, after the high winds, they had workers and trucks on the beach bagging the seaweed, loading it up and then raking.  Everything picture perfect for the visitors.

The postcard format (generic image with localised greeting) is perfect for this. It's just like taking a photo of a beach sunset and using it for any location on the coast.

Alter egos

Kewpie as alter ego is not a lasting fit. She fits a part of the experience of the Caymans. She's foreign, white and looking very out-of-place but that's only part of the story. The initial experience.

I'm playing with a return to the floating 'figure in a black coat' but this time in a white dress. More Sue-like, private, anonymous, ambiguous. Less cheerful, superficial cherub.

Postcards from the edge

I am creating a series of postcards - Greetings from George Town - I will publish on FaceBook each day. Initially, because I'm living here in George Town, Cayman Islands. That's where the adventure begins. But eventually, perhaps wherever the George goes.

I'm using them to document my days. My year. My first impressions and reflections on life in the Caymans.

Somewhat rudely, i'm starting with images from Cayman Brac, taken this weekend where the shore was awash with plastic. The flotsam and jetsam of our times.

I'm trying to capture something from the past. Those glossy postcards I bought and loved and posted as a child on holidays in the 1970s with generic images stamped to feel local and unique.  

Something like:

I'll experiment with different fonts and formats, until I capture the feel.

Aliens

A series of Kewpie photos capturing the feeling ... out of space/out of place.

Migration

It's topical and likely to stay topical as rising sea levels change geographies.

I'm mapping my own experience of the move from Brisbane to (aptly) George Town.

At the moment it feels as foreign as a new planet.