Artist Statement

Susan Mullen (b.1962 Australia)

A sense of home and belonging are at the heart of my art practice.

As a child of the 60s growing up on Bribie Island, I was afforded the freedom to independently explore my surrounds. I experienced the solitude of wandering through the native bushland and enjoyed many hours playing in the sand by the water’s edge of Pumicestone Passage. Building sand castles and convoluted cities with tunnels, moats and towers; these are my earliest memories of working with mud. Through these beginnings, I have engaged with the medium of clay. 

The very tactile nature of clay with its endless possibilities in textural application, are the key elements which excite me most of all. I employ a range of different hand building techniques which include pinching, coiling and slab construction. The artwork is developed further through the application of metal oxides, underglazes, and gloss, matt or dry glaze. My creative process explores repetition in form, colour and pattern and it’s the subtle textural variations and happy random firing outcomes that have drawn me to this medium.

Having recently completed a Bachelor of Fine Art majoring in Print Media, I am currently concerned with the nature of space and time, memory and a sense of belonging. Interested in translating some of the universal connections we share in our relationship to the symbol of home, my investigations into Post War Brisbane household interiors, embrace the changing trends in furnishings, fixtures and floor coverings. Realised through the printmaking techniques of photo release, dry point intaglio, etching, relief, and mono print, these images may invoke memory, locating us to time and place, as people with shared history. 

In addition to these sentiments and through the process of paper making, I am also interested in tracing the residual energy which lies within the structural surfaces of these buildings. Being of the belief that the urban environment has been imbued with the residual energies of past life and past action, I have commenced a line of inquiry which considers the layering of such surfaces and that when pared back, reveals a rich source of historical information.