SUZANNE ARCHER EXHIBITION REVIEWED IN ‘THE AGE’

Though death’s ever-increasing proximity forms the unavoidable nub of senior painter Suzanne Archer’s new exhibition of towering, texture-stuttered oils and smaller watercolour and acrylic paintings, her gaggle of dancing, twirling, boogying skeletons (several of them resplendent in wide-brimmed hats and all of them complete with puppeteers’ strings) seem to cackle in the face of the ultimate end. There’s something very Peter Booth about these paintings, both in subject matter and application. Archer’s masterful use of dense layers of paint is certainly reminiscent of Booth’s handling of the palette knife, while her work’s existentialist crux frees itself from hopelessness with its playful humanism. While a painting like the vast and somewhat self-explanatory Two Skeletons Messing with my Head – which sees two marauding bone bros playing a rugby-like game of catch with a decapitated cranium – might be a little dark in a different context, Archer’s treatment is decidedly frisky and humorous. Maybe she knows something that we don’t, but her skeletal choreographies seem to defy the threat of the end. While the skeleton’s symbolism has forever been connected to grim realities, she mocks her lanky actors as much as they mock her.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/our-pick-of-the-best-exhibitions-around-town-20150929-gjwhie.html#ixzz3nTsOP6n4
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