SUZANNE ARCHER: THE WHISPERING OF LEAVES (2018)

ARTIST STATEMENT

Over the last three years I have been ‘looking back’ over my 50-year body of work, initially prompted by two exhibitions Suzanne Archer: The Alchemy of the Studio at Macquarie University Art Gallery in 2016 followed by Moving Forwards, Looking Back at Nicholas Thompson Gallery in 2016/17 and in preparation for a book about my work due for release in 2019.

I work thematically, and at the end of my recent subject of China I was ready to move on. This retrospective view of my own work ironically inspired me to revisit the landscape of Wedderburn NSW, the theme that I had focused on when I moved to the area in 1987 and which I had continued working on into the early 1990’s.

This landscape is made up of rugged bushland with scraggly gum trees with their gnarled and grid-forming branches and deep gorges with rock pools. We are visited by king parrots, rock wallabies and koalas. The sounds are of cicadas, bird calls and ‘the whispering of leaves’.

Suzanne Archer 2018