...six women artists who encompass generational and cultural diversity have been selected to highlight a unique, challenging personal viewpoint through their creative art research practice.

The research in this exhibition seeks to explore a diversity of social constructs and study the development, structure and functioning of human society (sociology)relevant to the development, creation ans viewing of artworks. Artists are likely to use images that are drawn from the photographic for the symbiotic, connotative and denotative qualities; while the artist makes choices in order to first satisfy themselves as a maker or viewer and the viewer engages with perception and memory to aid meaning. The artist sometimes inadvertently acts as a conduit, a way of enabling the construction of meaning through the systems of representation they deploy: such as mediated imagery can be understood within the context of family photographs as a way of reinforcing and existing system of social engineering...

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- excerpt from Suss: A visual investigation into gendered social constructs from anintergenerational multidisciplinary perspective.

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SUSS: Artist research responses

 

Within my practice, I will take cues from language and reinterpret them into an image. It is interesting to try and express a thought directly to a viewer with access points and clues given within the context of a painting.

 

When given the title SUSS, I immediately picked up on the different interpretations of the shortened word within Aotearoa New Zealand vernacular - Suss=Suspect=Suspicious.

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But it also means to become aware of something - to suss something out, to be on guard and to be shrewd. Much like the characters in my paintings, contemporary society is always on edge.

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I have given some clues, but decisions on the hierarchical order of the figures are left to the viewer. Whether the paintings have a deeper meaning is also up to the viewer's decision to read the wall text - or not, to strike up a conversation - or not, or, to offer their own interpretation - or not.