Bio.
I am an East Midlands based installation artist working with light, space, wind and everyday materials. My minimal interventions key into their surroundings energizing both the material and the space/surroundings. Illusions such as floating and evanescence appear conjuring the magical and metaphysical: the many layered works transform into a meditation of time and place.
I studied at Kingston University and the Royal Academy, London. I have won national and international residencies including the Vermont Studio Center and Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, Wyoming. Awarded membership to the Royal Society of Sculptors, I have shown my work throughout the UK and abroad. Exhibitions include lakeside installations in Toledo, Spain and Laugarvatn, Iceland and exhibiting with the Stadtmuseum, Germany and Geumgang Nature Art Biennial, Korea. Recently my work has taken me to the Design Festa Gallery, Tokyo, The Cultural Space, San Paulo, Brazil and the Prairie Ronde Residency, Vicksburg, MI, USA.
A Londoner from birth, I have lived and worked in the town of Kettering, England, for the last eleven years.
Q&A
1 - Could you explain your practice? Only you know why you do what you do.
2 - Is art relevant today?
3 – We are always asked what other artists influence us, we want to know what art you don’t like and which influences you?
4- If you could go back 10-20 years what would you tell your younger self?
5 – If you could go forward 10-20 years what do you hope to have done or not done?
HAUS A REST 2024 Susan Williams
Art wise, why do I do what I do? There are so many different answers to explain my practice and as diverse as they all are, they would all be true. My practice is an emotional landscape, a slice of reality, a specific moment in time, a reflection of a place, my values personified, for example, valuing the world’s resources and the people in it.
In a more personal way art for me is my natural place of being - its like my spiritual home. It’s like a raw landscape that I roam wild and free, or a huge building, and inside, dark dusty corridors that I travel down. There are endless row of doors and I pause, gently push against one until it yields and I enter this airy magical space full of wondrous things that I have somehow never seen before although they have always been there. It’s a place of enchantment and magic and at the same time a metaphor for opening a new body of work. I am always alone, but I don’t seem to mind - it is of course, in reality, my world - no one else can enter.
For me art will always be relevant as it is fundamentally a form of communication and maybe a kind of statement of your existence as well as the product of problem solving amongst other things.
If I could go back 10-20 years I would say be more confident in applying for things and take more chances. Looking forward I would like to undertake more residencies and experience new places, and new challenges.
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https://www.susanwilliamsart.com
https://www.instagram.com/susanwilliamsart/
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