Garden of Cruel Delights

site responsive installation Coal Loader Waverton
Suzanne Davey, Garden of Cruel Delights, plants, wood, metal, bricks, stone, jute, copper, 250cm x 250cm x 800cm

A site responsive installation exhibited at the historic Coal Loader, Waverton, as part of the North Sydney Art Prize, curated by Alison Clark. The work was located on the Coal Loader Platform, surrounded by community garden beds. It extends and builds upon The Garden of Cruel Delights photographic series exploring our inter-relationships with plants.

site responsive art installation Coal Loader Waverton
Suzanne Davey, Garden of Cruel Delights, plants, wood, metal, bricks, stone, jute, copper, 250cm x 250cm x 800cm

Statement:

The Coal Loader is an exchange zone between us, plants and environmental forces, where flora experience constant transformation through our destructive and constructive actions. Tactile and material interventions performed on living plants are utilised to examine concepts such as empathy, control, adaptation to showcase the power of plants to lead us to better futures.

site responsive art installation
Suzanne Davey, Garden Of Cruel Delights, installation detail
site responsive art installation
Suzanne Davey, Garden Of Cruel Delights, installation detail
site responsive art installation
Suzanne Davey, Garden Of Cruel Delights, installation detail
site responsive art installation
Suzanne Davey, Garden Of Cruel Delights, installation detail
site responsive art installation
Suzanne Davey, Garden Of Cruel Delights, installation detail
site responsive art installation
Suzanne Davey, Garden Of Cruel Delights, installation detail
site responsive art installation
Suzanne Davey, Garden Of Cruel Delights, installation detail
site responsive art installation
Suzanne Davey, Garden Of Cruel Delights, installation detail
site responsive art installation Coal Loader Waverton
Suzanne Davey, Garden Of Cruel Delights, installation detail

Collecting Mountains

ceramic art installation
Suzanne Davey, Collecting Mountains, ceramics, mixed media, sound, 220cn x 200cm x 150cm

Collecting Mountains is a multidisciplinary installation created for EARTH: Four Elements exhibition at The Creative Space. The project included sound, photography, ceramics, plants, books relating to mountains, topographical maps of mountainous areas, domestic furniture, bricks and volcanic rocks. The sound element was a soothing Mountain Meditation repeated continuously. It was created by Wendy Wood, University of Derby, presented as part of a nursing workshop on compassion focussed therapy.  

Collecting Mountains reflects upon our complex and contradictory interrelationship with geology and our passive observations of the altered ecologies of the earths surface as we go about our day to day lives.   The work investigates mountains as a cultural construct upon which we project our desires for conquest, escape from the everyday, for spiritual fulfilment, our thirst for exploration and aspirational dreams. They fulfil key physical and psychological human needs yet we transform them irrevocably via land acquisition, large scale landscaping, mining and architectural interventions.  

The installation explores clay as an earth resource transformed by human action and draws upon ceramic decorative traditions of display in a domestic context, as passive background to our everyday experiences.  

Collecting Mountains asks how we might re-imagine our future relationship with the earths surface and considers how we may evolve into a sustaining species through reflection and thoughtful action.

Suzanne Davey, Book Mountain, detail, (without mountain books), ceramics, books
Suzanne Davey, Upside Down Mountain Pot, detail, ceramics, metal, plant
Suzanne Davey, Slices of Mountains, ceramic
Suzanne Davey, Shadowlands (series), stoneware ceramic
Suzanne Davey, Collecting Mountains detail, Hold, stoneware ceramic, 35 x 25 x 22 cm