Amelia Johnson Contemporary is delighted to present a solo exhibition of the Australian artist, Susan Purdy, as a part of the Australian Trade Commission’s annual “Australia Art & About”, a month long program dedicated to promoting Australian Art in Hong Kong.
Susan Purdy is an Australian artist interpreting her Asian and Western ancestry through art. Employing the early European technique of the photogram, where objects are laid directly onto photographic paper and then exposed. Her hauntingly beautiful images propose a dialogue with traditional Chinese painting and create a resonant inversion of the ‘black mark on white silk’ that characterizes Chinese calligraphic scrolls.
Using objects collected over the years throughout Asia in combination with leaves and flowers, her work displays a keen aesthetic awareness of the ways the various stems, blooms and vessels suggest and echo calligraphic brush marks.
As Purdy explains; “… I collect and arrange various objects selected from the world. The image depends upon the specific placement of these objects, the shadow or traces left by their presence and their translucency, and the illusion of their three-dimensionality. The positioning of things and their right or harmonious location is determined by their relationship to each other and the edges of the paper. The challenge is in finding potent combinations…”
