Susan Norrie

Samoan Series: Somewhere , 2010-2011
oil on canvas

131 x 195 cm
signed, dated and inscribed with title ‘Susan Norrie/2010-2011/SAMOAN SERIES/SOMEWHERE’ (on the reverse)

SOLD

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Provenance
Mori Gallery, Sydney
Private collection, Sydney


For many years Norrie and her family would regularly travel to Samoa for their holidays, visiting the village of Lalomanu. In 2009 this beautiful place was the epicenter of an earthquake, with the subsequent tsunami stripping the surrounding amazing coral reef.

A few years later, when some of the village had been rebuilt, Norrie attended the wedding of an Australian woman and a Samoan man.  She witnessed the preparations for the wedding that took days to create, photographing the event, and later developing the image through her extensive screen printing and painting techniques.  The energy, lushness and colour of the wedding, contrasts with the grey of the sea, devoid now of the once abundant coral and sea life.

It could be seen to have an element of National Geographic’s in this work but equally there is a considered sense of another world. Although a tourist destination, it is a poor island but with great resilience and beauty.

  • Samoan Series: Somewhere

Image courtesy of the artist


View artist profile

Susan Norrie's preoccupation with politics and the environment have
always informed the subject matter of her work. From the feminist overtones of
her earlier series 'Lavished Living', (1983-1984) and 'Objet D'Art' (1988), to
her comments on consumerism found in her series 'Tall Tales and True'
(1986-1987) and 'Peripherique' (1989), or to the more recent video works
'Undertow' (2002) and the geologically and politically volatile view of
Indonesia documented in 'Havoc', seen at the 2007 Venice Biennale, Norrie’s
diverse oeuvre is challenging and, at times, polemical in its honest
deconstruction of modern society. 

After studying painting at the National Art School, Sydney and the National
Gallery School, Melbourne in the 1970s, Norrie began creating films and
installation pieces in the mid-1990s; works that blur the line between art and documentary.
The beauty of Norrie’s works – whether it be painting, drawing, installation or
video – is Norrie's control of media and materiality. The tactile quality of
her surfaces are often a contradictory experience to the harsh reality of the
stories she tells.

From the moment Norrie began exhibiting in 1982, her work has been
highly regarded for being both conceptually and materially advanced. In 1987, she
won the first Moet & Chandon prize for an artist under 35, which became a
pivotal point in her career. Since then, she has held residencies at Greene
Street Studio, New York, and in New Zealand and Germany. She received the 1997
Seppelt Prize, Contemporary Art Award, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. In
1999 she received an Australia Council Fellowship, and in 2004 she received an
APA Scholarship for PhD Studies at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

Norrie’s work has been exhibited in many international and national
surveys of contemporary art. She represented Australia at the 2007 Venice
Biennale, and has been in important group shows including the Montreal Biennale (2015); the Biennale of Sydney (2014, 2004); the Yokohama Triennale (2011); In the Balance: Art for a Changing World,
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2010); and Figuring Landscapes, Tate Modern, London (2008). Norrie's work has been written on extensively and is held in all state and most regional gallery
collections of Australia, as well as in the Auckland City Art Gallery and the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.