Órla Kelly
Apr — May 2022
Creative Development of The Toddler Take Over
Artist Susan Buttner started her residency in early March 2020, just before the first Covid-19 lockdown, and continued to work between Draíocht's Studio and home, as per Covid-19 restrictions allowed during the year.
Susan Buttner is a visual artist based in Dublin 15 whose practice is concerned with ideas around knowledge and power, identity politics, alienation and differences. Appealing to her own sensibility, her choice of materials are wide ranging, integrating industrially manufactured with crafted objects, often revealing playful juxtapositions and co-existences. Performance, film and sound elements activate her installations, offering a metaphorical sense of place where hierarchies between historical and personal narratives are collapsed.
Current and forthcoming projects include ‘Chewing gum in my hair’, (which began in 2019 as part of the RHA school peer residency award), it explores the medical and health impacts of mesh surgery on the individual and collective body, and considers the politics of female subjectivity. This project incorporates a series of collaborative art workshops in Dublin, and Belfast, creating a space where women can come together to discuss the side effects of the mesh and the detrimental impact it has had on their lives. This project will culminate with a live performance, choreographed by Buttner with dancers Rebecca Reilly and Ella Clarke creating a synergy between sound, film, sculpture, figuration and movement.
Recent selected group exhibitions include ARRANGEMENTS (Orphans), Pallas Projects Studios. Sirens III, live installation/performance, (Celina Muldoon) Kevin Kavanagh Gallery. Cairde Visual, The Model. RHA 189th Annual Exhibition. Periodical Review, Pallas Projects Studios. PeripheriesOpen, Gorey School of Art. Strange Foreign Bodies, Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, (sculptural works selected by Sarah Browne for Report to the Academy Exhibition).
Image: Susan Buttner, Chewing gum in my hair, 2019, installation view, photograph courtesy of the artist, RHA Studios, Dublin
