‘Fault Lines’ presented by WTFCollective, Alizon Bennet, Wendy Helps and Susie Wright, maps our individual and collective journeys as practitioners through these unprecedented times: personal isolation, anxiety, existential questions, political and economic turbulence and a sense of fracture and dislocation inform our works.

‘Fault Lines’ - WTFCollective
Open Daily 10th to 15th November 2022.
Bottleworks, 8 Riverside Walk, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 1LX

I am still thinking about my visit to Documenta Fifteen in Kassel last month. Arriving in a torrential downpour at the 1960’s station forecourt, Kassel felt very austere. I went straight to the heart of the project and info point called the ‘ruru house’. It had exhibitions, chill out spaces and a bookshop. I spent some time there just listening in to and taking part in conversation, being part of a connective atmosphere. This is the first Documenta curated by artists, a political intervention of self-determination. Lumbung from Indonesia organised the show, which was big and varied with a worldwide network of collectives (full of acronyms !) taking centre stage, rather than a few individuals. There was an exploration of different economic models for supporting artists and ethics in action, with representation of collectives working in some very tough living conditions. Unusually, I took a tour ! The tour guide Hans presented our gathering as a conversation between us with the idea that walking round was an opportunity to exchange and share multiple interpretations, and so it was. There was a visceral feel of creativity, work in progress, fresh and hot off the press. My highlights were; a show in what was a former swimming pool by Indonesian cultural activists Taring Padi, which included cardboard placards, banners and posters; a documentary video of a drawing event, by Wajukuu Art Project a kind of a community performance, creating a positive focus in the slums of Nairobi; the work of ikkibawiKerr, songs from the female South Korean seaweed divers, set against backdrop of a past Japanese invasion, presented with a model village animated with laser cut sculpture.

I came away with lots of philosophical food for thought and feeling very lucky to be part of a collective of three, with its very own acronym! Here is more about our show next month. Entitled ‘Fault Lines’, the exhibition maps our individual and collective journeys as practitioners through these unprecedented
times: personal isolation, anxiety, existential questions, political and economic turbulence and a sense of fracture and dislocation inform our works. Because of the practicalities of the space and our desire to get as much time as possible to talk to visitors, we have decided not to have a Private View, instead, we will be resident in the gallery every day. Save the date!

‘Fault Lines’
Open Daily 10th to 15th November 2022.
Thursday 10th November 14.00 –18.00.
Friday 11th to Tuesday 15th November 11.00-18.00
Bottleworks, 8 Riverside Walk, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 1LX

I have been taking full advantage of the Deutche-Bahn 9 Euro ticket, getting access to local rail and bus networks during August. I have managed to see some places in Germany that otherwise might have taken me years to get to and the experience of travelling on the trains has been memorable; usually it’s an empty train, that arrives on time and speeds in air-cooled luxury to its destination. This summer, instead of being one of a few on the platform, travel has felt like commuting on the London underground or waiting for a train in India, with a lot of people watching. I’ve seen a full cross section of German society from backpackers and old couples to large families.

I really enjoyed Bremerhaven maritime days seeing the harbour crammed with steam ships and square riggers. I visited Walter Gropius’s Fagus shoe factory in Alfeld, a design icon from 1913 still looking brand new and being used for developing shoe lasts. The canteen serving lunch in Bauhaus style. I made it to Worpswede, the artists’ village made famous by Paula Modersohn-Becker, a backwater until Heinrich Vogeler ( a German version of William Morris ) settled there. It is now resplendent with villas, most of which are Galleries, art, cycle routes and coffee shops.

As wolves features a lot in fairy tales and is a sometimes guest in mine, I wanted to see some for myself, so I took a hike into the countryside south of Bremen to the privately run (with tree house hotels) Dorveden Wolfcenter. Not a place I would usually choose to visit but I did get to see these extraordinary creatures elegantly flit across the forest enclosures. I was glad there was a two-metre fence between us as their main interest was in the next feeding time, when a lump of meat gets unceremoniously lobbed over the fence and wolfed down in one.

I didn’t know that wolves walk very long distances to find their own territory. They became extinct in the UK under Henry IIX and have not been in Germany for decades until a couple, wandered over the border from Poland twenty years ago and now there are five hundred in the Federal Republic, mostly in the former East Germany. I learn that unlike dogs, which like a dictatorship, Wolves are egalitarian. This means that there is no pecking order in a wolf pack and while a dog will sit, raise a paw and wait to be fed a biscuit, a wolf will just snatch it out of your hand and run off. There’s no chance of training a wolf otherwise. It seems that today’s wolves are unrelated to dogs and the original wolf which dogs are descended from, has long been extinct. Such a brilliant animal which deserves its large place in the human imagination and probably not its reputation. After my day in the Wolfcenter, I had ‘Steinbeisser mit pommes’ for dinner, which it turns out, was North Atlantic Wolf-fish and chips.

Finally, I’m on a wrap for this year’s shows. I have now completed all ten Fairy Tales and am ready to go to print. My contribution to the Newcastle show is packed up and ready for the road……nearly, that is, it’s just the recent situation at the Portovaya plant and pressure on working households to make ends meet with rising gas bills, is asking for another painting….

It seems like this summer is burning up ! I hope you have managed to find shade and cool somewhere, I have been trying to climate control the studio, with not too much luck, defaulting to the back of the flat for writing. I have just published another poem on the writing page of my website. I wrote it two years ago after a trip to Switzerland. Taking the train all the way with masks on, the pandemic didn’t seem to have touched Switzerland (yet). This precious place with spectacular landscape, inspired me to write from a fabulous lido in a small village called Lenk. It seems to be very topical this summer, its called ‘Waterfalls’.

Two bits of exhibition news….firstly I have just met Graham High, fellow Leeds alumni, who, with his partner Frances, runs a weekend gallery in Blackheath. They will host ‘The Fairy Tale Forest’ in their perfectly pint sized ‘White Box Gallery’ for the first three weekends in December 2022.

I shared my ideas from a recent visit to ‘Minatur Wunderland’ www.miniatur-wunderland.de in Hamburg with Graham and he says not only will he help me install the show but also assist with my planned miniature ‘Fairy Tale Forest’ window display. For an artist who has an impressive career working on animated props for Babe, Aliens and Harry Potter (to name only a few) he is seriously overqualified for the job……..what a stroke of luck!

Secondly, I am a founding member of the WTF Collective, an artist network which we set up during the pandemic, exhibiting collectively every week on Instagram since 2020 @WTFCollective2020. Fellow artists Alizon Bennet www.alizonbennet.com and Wendy Helps @wahelps are both based in Whitley Bay and among many artistic endeavours, make a big contribution to the carnival there. Our goals are to support each other in developing our own creative work, to exhibit together and see where these interventions will take us collectively…. We have now found ‘Bottleworks’ in Newcastle, on the Lower Ouseburn Valley, near to the city for shopping and eateries. We will be exhibiting there from Thursday 10th to the Tuesday 15th November 2022. More on PVs soon, save the date !

I have had some time out of the studio and been absorbing working with Jazael Olguin Zapata. I met Jazael through niki Hannover, a Hannover based artists collective which runs international residencies and exchanges https://niki-hannover.org/. Jazael invited me to contribute to his ‘drawing the city’ workshop. We took a stroll together, talking about art, philosophy and the gallery system, while exploring the City of Hannover. I was able to create my first Hannover version of ‘swalkeling’, a method I use for recording the landscape and creating a record of a walk or thought in time, ( more about ‘swalkeling’ is in the -human trace - page of my gallery www.susiesatelier.co.uk/gallery/humantrace ). When previously the streets of Hannover had given me nothing, we got lots of finds !
Jazael, a multi talented Mexican artist has published over 40 collaborative and individual publications, many of which are pure drawing, his larger works are simply pinned to the wall drawn on Mexican cloth. He has a major Instagram following @goustofhxz. When we first met, he was drawing as we spoke, he described it as a kind ‘presence’ while being absent. The results are automatic and have a freedom which has inspired me. Jazael created a zine during his residency, a curated collection of contributions from artists in his workshop and his own response to Hannover, he created a mini zine for me within this publication, which I think of as a great honour. His zine has already been presented to Documenta Fifteen in Kassel.
Jazael reminded me about the joyfulness of freehand drawing, the creativity and confidence it conveys. I hope to have caught the essence of this in the cover for my first publication for the fairy tale forest, a jelly bean / seed motif.

So here’s my highlight of the year….. I have just returned from an art trip to Venice Biennale in the company of Hannover Kunstverein. There are two main venues for the Bienale, the Giardini which is a handsome large garden with architectural pavilions and the Arsenale, which is a vamped-up warehouse area, even bigger than the Giardini. There are also collateral events around the city. The water taxis, lovely weather, good company and free rides in golf carts were great for starters….it turned out this WAS the one to see.
Ceclilia Alemani, curating the theme ‘The Milk of Dreams’ presents mainly female artists from around the world here. https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2022/milk-dreams. So as you go round you are immersed in female talent. So much talent and its only taken a century to get there…… ! The striking work of Simone Leigh both in the American pavilion in the Giardini and Arsenale, is timely, majestic and powerful, she has put ‘gestalt’ back into monumental sculpture, with unquestionable authority and presence. Another top favourite in Arsenale, Portia Zvavahera, a Zimbabwean painter, whose magical large scale colourful painting and oil drawing is inspirational. Londoners and neighbours in the Giardini, Sonia Boyce (UK Pavillion) and Zineb Sedira (French pavilion) also captivated me, their description of the vibrant culture of South East London’s Brixton in the 80’s resonated and their creativity and magnanimous collectivism is the centre of the show.
Wandering round in the shade, I chanced upon a small broken cowrie ornament underfoot at the side of the canal. Simone Leigh’s shell heads fresh in my mind, it felt like a big bold sign ! My use of thread is a way of literally joining random dots, a metaphor for making connections and trying to make sense of our world. At the same time it is a form of free drawing, where the back of the paper is as important as the front. An instant abstract, it also presents a journey or a path while also referencing the use of thread as subversive stitch. So here it is, my humble contribution to commemorate a massive cultural shift on the global stage.

The crowds have arrived! Did you notice during the pandemic the way that basic info graphics were used for public health messaging? Very often a flow chart showing the exponential growth of infection through populations from one to millions was used in grids of people. This use of icon, from one individual to a crowd, is something I began to use in my ‘NewsBlitz’ paintings and recently, in a mobile sculpture, made up just under one hundred pieces which I’m calling ‘Omicron / Volcano’. A side product of my laser cutting has been the possibility of proliferating the image of one person and creating people confetti….. This is a part of my language that you will see recur again, either in installations or in paintings themselves. I like the way it shows us as part of a bigger collective and at times can be used to convey the way that when we grow in numbers, we can become faceless flotsam and jetsom, subject to the tides of political or geological upheaval. ‘Omicron / Volcano’ and ‘people confetti’ will be on show in our first WTF Collective show in Newcastle this coming November.
David Mc Candless is one of my inspirations for info graphics, his work relies on internet searches translating data into image. He has been so successful in combining relevant concepts with alluring graphics, that he now runs virtual workshops. https://informationisbeautiful.net/. His book ‘Information is Beautiful’, is a complete eye opener, you’ll see his influence in my other upcoming project ‘The Fairy Tale Forest’…..watch this space !

This was a technical break through month, with my newly acquired desktop laser cutter now fully working as my studio assistant. It took me whilte to work out how not to destroy the cutting bed, but I’ve got it now. Not only can it cut intricate shapes but can also repeat my drawings, stuff that dreams are made of ! I have used it for some earthquake drawings and small water colour collages for the October show….with lots of La Palma drama - see my blog picture. I am already a sucker for watercolour paper, so exploring the beautiful and complex potential of this paper surface alongside the simplicity and austerity of the cutouts has been a treat.
Rob Ryan keeps coming to mind, I had a chance to see him as part of his book launch for ‘You can still do a lot with a small brain’, in a small greenhouse in Wapping, many years ago. He was there with his partner and did not say much, we were only a small group in the space at the time. Towards the end of the launch he produced a spectacular treasure in the form of one enormous paper-cut which was like lace, this delicate object was handed round an awestruck circle. This labour-intensive work was supported by many studio woman and man hours, Ryan had just been offered work designing underpants for a South Korean company at the time (!), this made me realise that the art making process really is a big adventure. I think Rob Ryan invested in a laser cutter very soon after that, it looks like he still has a shop on Columbia Road and more….https://robryanstudio.com/

The commission for my local community centre in London SE3 is complete !

We installed my sculpture at Mycenae House on a glorious sunny day and the octopus vase was already working its shadows before the last bolt was secured. It has been such fun working with 3D Product designer Tommy Haycocks, not only for his knowledge, skill and enthusiasm but also his attention to detail, a perfectionist to the last, the octopus has become way more than I could have ever imagined. As we worked, we drew much attention from passers-by of all ages and comments like ‘ what is it ? is it an octopus ? ‘ that really cheered us on !

The octopus is now mellowing into a golden rusty brown and started to look like it never left the niche of the entrance to Mycenae House, it has already survived Eunice, Dudley and Franklyn, so its there to stay and to be seen just about any time of day if you are in the neighbourhood.

If you interested in an inspirational and unexpected read - Sy Montgomery’s Soul of an Octopus – is an incredible account of this animal, its ancient blood line and how it behaves in captivity

It´s been a gray January brightened by the Zoom opening and online launch of ‘Carbon.Borders.Voices’ created by a collective of generously minded curators, artists and academics based in Hull. I am enjoying the evocative artwork they have selected, very diverse in outcome but all linked to what is an essential conversation. They are releasing images via Instagram weekly and I feel humbled to be listed alongside many other creatives in the index section of their website https://www.carbon-borders-voices.com/

In the Atelier I have been thinking about magma, rocks and hot air….I have been working on a contribution to the first collaborative show of the WTFCollective, planned for Newcastle later in the year entitled ‘Fault Lines’. My current thread of enquiry has been to do with the extraordinary and continually unfolding events in La Palma and Tonga, spectacular eruptions are threatening whole communities . It must be horrific to see a tongue of molten lava head directly for your home, just a matter of time before it is incinerated, to be blanketed with enormous dust and smoke clouds and witness the majesty and power of the earth’s vibrant entrails just moving on, regardless of any other living thing. Meantime the Omicron variant seems to be working its way through more families and every social arena….so I have made a series of multiple Omicrons. There are parallels, maybe it’s the drive of mutation which just does not stop with the Coronavirus, finding new ways to adapt and attach. Each of my Omicrons is painted with more than a puff of CO2, I hope to find a way for them to be airborne echoing the slope of a volcano somehow, in the gallery space when we install. This develops a link with some of the iconography and my Etna in the Collective Memory show, I also think I must be channelling Werner Herzog’s extraordinary movie Into the Inferno which I saw just before Christmas. An artwork in itself which just about makes my Omicrons dust.

In between lockdowns during 2021, I had my first solo show ‘Collective Memory 20*21’ at the Greenwich Gallery, London. This was very kindly supported by Tony and Helen Othen, reopening the gallery with my show was an honour and on top of this, I was very well looked after. It was fabulous to see so many friends and family after months of isolation and also meet new people who popped by. I have special memories of many moments in the Gallery and relished the waves of energy that visitors brought through the door. It was so great to have an audience for my work after all this time in confinement. All the feedback and ideas from visitors was invaluable. Just about all the Newblitz paintings got new homes, even the comets ! The giclee prints kept the handdrawn quality of my digital images with a matt surface, where you can see the tension between marks and rendered spaces, exactly what I was looking for. Only a few of these limited edition prints are still available.

This year I was successful in securing a commission for Mycenae House, a community centre in London SE3. I am so excited about my laser cut sculpture and it was great fun working with Tommy Haycocks, as we developed my design drawings into CADCAM and solved how this object was really going to work in the niche. We are installing in February 22 and looking forward to an opening event.

Projects and proposals in the susiesatelier section of my website show some of the submissions I made this year with feedback and also ideas that just keep knocking around in my head that are looking for spaces or commissioners. My card pack ‘The Talking Deck’ has now been designed and printed and will comprise part of ‘the Fairy Tale Forest’ my project for 2022.

I have been accepted for my first group show in January 2022 called ‘Carbon -Borders - Voices` which will be launched online on the 24th January and will eventually become a material exhibition. What is really exciting about this is the planned discussion and ideas sharing, so being part of an even wider community will be my first step in 2022.

Wishing you a fabulous and safe winter break.

Now my website has gone live…..

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