Gathering Shadows

Suzanne Davey, Gathering Shadows, ceramic, brick, bones, wood, charcoal, shells, 70cm x 300cm x300cm

Gathering Shadows is a site responsive installation that responds to the changing cultural history of the Coal Loader, Waverton, from its indigenous heritage, land use on the site, its role in facilitating the coal mining industry through to its current role as a centre for sustainability on the harbour foreshore.    The work considers our inter-dependence with site histories (indigenous, animal, geological) and the potential future consequences of our collective actions and inaction towards environmental ecologies.    Notions of temporal flows, site ruptures and dis-ruptures, surface wounds and healing are investigated.    The work explores clay as a media shaped by human touch and the ceramic traditions of containment. Unable to hold back their contents shells, small animal bones, charcoal and bricks flow and spill in the shadows of the ceramic forms.   

Suzanne Davey, Gathering Shadows, detail, ceramic, brick, bones, wood, charcoal, shells, 70cm x 300cm x300cm
Suzanne Davey, Gathering Shadows, detail, stoneware ceramic, 45 x 40 x 40 cm

All That Remains: SALTWATER

Suzanne Davey, All that Remains, ceramic, salt, 50cm x 250cm x 100cm

All That Remains featured in SALTWATER, a group exhibition at Manly Art Gallery curated by Katherine Roberts. The ceramic sculpture and salt installation responds to the ocean as a dystopic landscape. It explores the sea as a place where contemporary human dramas are played out as people seek sanctuary and safe harbour, and as a site of irreversible ecological and geographical loss in a climate changed future. The work is a fragile memorial relic that references our complex cultural, psychological and corporeal connections to the ocean through motifs of human and marine anatomy as well as maritime architecture. Despite human loss and environmental destruction ‘what remains’ is the chance to seek new responses and political solutions to human struggles.

Suzanne Davey, All That Remains, ceramic, salt, 50cm x 250cm x 100cm