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

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