News

[susanstockwell]

Cultuurkrant, Culture Newspaper, Amsterdam NL, featuring my work Territory Dress in the exhibition, Our Colonial Inheritance at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam.

This newspaper is Culturkrant NL and the article is speaking of hope, and is about uncomfortable conversations about the legacies of the colonial past and education.

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Trade Winds (32 P. 453) in this newly published book Crossings: Migrant Knowledges, Migrant Forms

see link below for more pages

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New Year New Newsletter

Happy New Year to you & yours…..

"2024 was a good year for me and I’m grateful. Here are some highlights and a few things happening in 2025........."

Happy Days Everyone!

[susanstockwell]

I am honoured to have my work Money Dress shown in and feature on the publicity for the exhibition, Money Talks at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 9th Aug 2024-10th Jan 2025.

Exploring the place of money in our world through different artistic lenses.

Money Talks will reveal how currency and art come together in design and culture to promote or challenge our views. It will feature works by some of the best-known artists, from Da Vinci and Rembrandt to Warhol and Banksy.

We are hardly aware that most of the imagery on our currency begins its life as art, before being mass produced on coins and notes. It has a dramatic impact on what and who we imagine is valuable.

Money has been a popular theme in art – from greed and prejudice to plenitude and happiness, artists have long explored and commented upon the balance between power and wealth through using money artistically in novel ways.

This major new exhibition will feature over 100 objects, including work from artists Andy Warhol and Grayson Perry, and from artists Banksy and Paula Stevens-Hoare who use money itself as a medium for political commentary and satire.

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Europa is a lifesize sculpture made from maps & cloth. It reflects Susan's time in France and questions recent historic events in Europe, including the war in Ukraine, Brexit and mass migration. Europa is a time traveller looking out to what? standing in sea water and carrying a rucksack she bears the weight of an unpredictable future. Meticulously crafted and subtly revealing she is both beautiful, and full of foreboding at the same time.

Shown here at Hotel d'Astier, in the exhibition Out of Time as part of Forcalquier Atelier Ouverts Arts Festival France July/Aug 2023

Photographs by Brice Duprat

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'Out of Time' installation @ Hotel d'Astier, Forcalquier, France 2023

A major solo exhibition and site-specific installation, Out of Time at Hotel d'Astier, Forcalquier, France.

The renaissance courtyard installation, Hot Air evoked the night sky, hot air balloons, and a miniature universe. Meticulously crafted and subtly revealing, this installation established the links between colonial behaviours, global warming, pandemics, and our fragile world. As well as the underlying deeper meanings the work is also uplifting and evoked a sense of play and wonder. Each globe resembles a hot air balloon and appears to float across the space with objects associated with global warming hanging in place of where the balloons basket; a gun, toy oil tankard, iPhone, coal basket to name a few.

Susan’s interest in the politics of feminism and the body has led to a series of dress sculptures including, Territory Dress, 2018, commissioned by and on permanent display in Our Colonial Inheritance at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam and Colonial Dress, which in the collection of the House of European History in Brussels.

For this exhibition Susan created a new sculptural dress, entitled Europa, the sculpture reflects her time in France and questions recent historic events in Europe, including the war in Ukraine, Brexit and mass migration.

The title of the exhibition was inspired by the Blur song Out of Time –

(Chorus)

And you’ve been so busy lately

That you haven’t found the time

To open up your mind

And watch the world spinning

Gently out of time,

Tell me I’m not dreaming

But are we out of time?

(Outro)

We’re out of time out of time

Out of time

Out of time

Out of time……….

Out of time

[susanstockwell]

Looking forward to giving a talk about my practice @FAHCS today 2pm @universityofleeds The next speaker in our #VisitingArtistsTalks series is #susan.Stockwell.studio @susan.stockwell.studio works across #sculpture #installation #collage & #film Please come, all welcome Mon 30 January 2pm @UniversityLeeds ahc.leeds.ac.uk/fine-art/event… #susanstockwell #feminism #materiality #colonialhistories #socialhistories #fahacs #vat (at University of Leeds) https://www.instagram.com/p/CoCRu-cIpZ6/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[susanstockwell]

Miami, Untitled Art Fair with Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, Booth A13. My map works are on show alongside other artists @patrickheideca "Susan Stockwell works across sculpture, installation and film. Her art employs the material culture of everyday domestic and manufacturing products, such as recycled computer components, maps, and money. Stockwell transforms these seemingly banal products into compelling artworks. In her computer component maps Stockwell addresses globalized waste and consumption, while its materials reveal the histories of a post-colonial exploitation in a globalized world. Subverting these objects into beautiful maps the earnest concepts behind the practice are balanced out by the playful and the seductive."

[susanstockwell]

‘Jerusalem-Brexit’ knitted wool 2018. I am wondering why British politicians & media/BBC don’t talk about BREXIT? The elephant in the room & main cause of the UK’s unique isolation and difficulties. BRXIT, Brexit, BREXIT, it’s not a difficult word to pronounce or spell! This work was made in response to the frustrations I was feeling about what Brexit would mean, as Jonathan Jones puts it his Guardian review, “Scotland looks proper and correct, yet Brexit-voting England and Wales are collapsing in a shapeless mess. Brexit is not strengthening national identity in this acidic knit but melting this scented isle…..” from Painted into a Corner….British art responds to the folly of Brexit, about the exhibition ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ at Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, in The Guardian March 2019 @patrickheideca @guardian

[susanstockwell]

‘Sail Painting’ reminded of this installation at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre 2015. The culmination of a year-long residency. 30+ used and hand crafted sails hung at various angels and levels over the 3 storey front of theatre atrium spaces. The viewer walked through it saw it from different levels and walkways, as if walking inside a three-dimensional painting. The installation was made in response to that seasons plays, Othello & The Merchant of Venice. Thanks to @thersc & @geraldinecollinge #rsc #installationart #artistinresidence #susanstockwell (at Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ck22vMLI_YD/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Amazon Rainforest inspired work from the 1990s and 2000s made with many tons of upcycled rubber inner tubes and a pilgrimage to the home of Chico Mendes environmentalist, rubber tappers union leader and hero/healer who lost his life fighting to save the rainforest. Here’s to Brazil’s new leader, Lula (November 2022) for taking up the arms against deforestation.

[susanstockwell]

HELP! / Au Secours!

“Travel the world in charming boats, try ferris wheels in Paris and see important stars” film of my work in Passage au Jardin, Bozouls, France. The work consists of many found and constructed map globes, made from maps, money boats, ferris wheels and other strange objects. An Alice in Wonderland like world speaking of the vulnerability and fragility of our world and us.

Video 1.59 min’s.

Passage au Jardin

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WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER?

Artwork Quilt by Susan Stockwell in collaboration with staff at Pinsent Masons, London

Susan Stockwell was Artist in Residence at Pinsent Masons (2019-2021) during which time she showcased her artwork through the building. These artworks included life-size Dress Sculptures, quilts and maps made from domestic products and paper money and maps.

At the start of 2020 Susan also set up sewing workshops and invited staff to participate by making and contributing swatches to a quilt. Originally people were asked to make in response to how they felt personally, philosophically or politically about the current times and consider issues around sustainability. Once the Coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns began the project changed in response. At a time when people were working from home, facing the unknown and often experiencing anxiety, illness and loss, the therapeutic role of sewing and creative endeavor became forefront. People’s responses to the pandemic became the subject matter and gradually patchwork swatches evolved that told the participants stories. Contributions included sewn, drawn, collaged, painted, knitted and written works.

Susan’s participatory quilt idea evolved out of a series of similar projects that she did with other institutions and groups. She has worked with veteran soldiers and the National Army Museum, teenage mums at the Florence Nightingale Museum and Lambeth Councils recycling department.

Once all the swatches were gathered Susan assembled them into a large-scale quilt. The result is a lively, colourful and enticing work that draws the viewer in to see the detail of each swatch. We Are All in This Together? Has created a legacy to Susan’s residency at Pinsent Masons as well as to an unforgettable period in our history.

The title of the quilt naively began as We Are All in This Together at the start of Covid and became, We Are All in This Together? As time went by and the pandemic underlined and exacerbated pre-existing social and economic inequalities and injustices.

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Territory Dress is now on permanent display at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam NL in their exhibition, Our Colonial Heritage. Territory Dress was commissioned by the Tropenmuseum in 2018 as part of their innovative process of reframing their collection. It is concerned with claiming female territory, mapping the body and colonial histories. It is made from mixed media. The train creates a kind of movement, as if passing through time, pulling the weight of a brutal past whilst the hollow in the abdomen questions the origins of bodily and national proprietary.

Territory Dress at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam NL in their exhibition, Our Colonial Heritage.

https://www.tropenmuseum.nl/.../territory-dress-nieuwe...

Een museum over wereldculturen

Tropenmuseum, een museum over wereldculturen, gevestigd in een van de mooiste museumgebouwen van Amsterdam.   

How do you visualize Dutch colonialism and its contemporary afterlives into a work of art? British artist

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Blood Lines featured on the cover of this month's Wasafiri Magazine of international literature @wasafiriMag edition 111 Translating Lives. Blood Lines is part of a series of work called Sweet Plumbs (see other images) that subverts and appropriates maps and materials.….Big thanks to Wasafiri Magazine and Malachi McIntosh for including my work @wasafirimag  @susan.stockwell.studio

[susanstockwell]

Making Materials Meaningful, the interview in English for Evolve Magazine, as many people have requested it (see above post). @evolve_magazin #evolvemagazine @artist-interviews #artist-interviews @ecology_art @sustainableartcollection @patrickheideca @the_artists_agency #patrickheidecontemporaryart (at London, United Kingdom)

Images from the exhibition, 'Hidden Histories, Untold Stories' at Warrington Museum & Art Gallery 2020. Commissioned by Arts&Heritage as part of their Meeting Point Project.

[susanstockwell]

Delighted to have been selected for the Grizedale Residency 2021. Thank you @royal_sculptors &