Susan Chancellor, Cheese collations, 2023. Image courtesy of Rob Evans.
Susan Chancellor
Gallery 3
Friday 23 February - Sunday 17 March
Opening Thursday 22 February 2024, 6pm - 8pm
Cold collations – to collect and combine or arrange – usually referring to plates of mixed cold foods prepared for a social gathering.
The title, Cold Collations, derives from Dr. Susan Chancellor’s memory of a party in the late nineteen seventies where the hostess, Jaki, (jokingly) asked the guests to partake of the ‘cold collations’ she had prepared. Forty five years later Chancellor explores themes of memory, space and time through this new work and finds ways to generate a sense of movement and luminosity in the work.
This exhibition follows on from a joint project the artist was involved with during Covid lockdowns where three artists distanced by disease and geography used Australia Post to convey small artworks to each other to be worked on in turn then passed on again. The outcome was surprising and resulted in the exhibition, Transmission. Needing to find a way to work on someone else’s art work, led all three to experiment with new media and to engage in their art practices in inventive ways. This experience has provided the professional impetus for Chancellor to expand her practice with a new medium, ceramics, and make a shift to abstraction.
Chancellor explores how playfully arranged groupings (collations) of abstract paintings and small ceramic sculptures can energise a space. Gestural marks, positive and negative spatial arrangements, contrasts in colour, scale and surface textures all play a role in activating the surfaces of the paintings and objects in this exhibition. While contrasts abound, the employment of the square form, repeated throughout this body of work, serves as a unifying element along with the theme of tantalising party food.
Susan Chancellor, Cold Collations series, 2023. Image courtesy of David Paterson.
About the Artist
Susan Chancellor graduated with a practice-led PhD in visual art at ANU in 2018. Based on the Far South Coast of NSW, Chancellor is essentially a painter, although in recent years the monotype has been the focus of her art practice. Drawing, hand built ceramics and digital art also form part of her practice. Chancellor explores themes of time, space and memory using larger formats such as panoramic series of works and muti-panel installations and digital art.
Chancellor has held twelve solo exhibitions and taken part in many Group exhibitions. She has been a selected finalist for twenty curated art prizes, winning a number of awards including both the Basil Sellers Prize at Moruya and the Bega Valley Art Award in 2014. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the ACT Legislative Assembly, Basil Sellers and in January 2024 her work was included in the exhibition, HOME: works from the collection, at South East Contemporary Artspace/Bega (SECCA/Bega).
