domestic lives 2

Domestic Lives : The Art of Susan O'Doherty

Elizabeth Butel & Joanna Capon

ETT Imprint & Manly Regional Art Gallery; ISBN 978-875892-025-9

40pp, illustrated, $30 Post-free

sample text

"The isolation of the domestic environment; its remoteness from the world of events is evoked in Message. Instead of life and activity there is stasis, underlined, in this image by the blunt shape of the telephone, that sits dormant, promising/threatening to break the silence. The artist has described it with a luminous red line, which trails from its base to a small, solid block of red. The same dry red gesture links other motifs. At right, it arcs beneath an area of umber, creating a sense of equilibrium. The same gently curving shape is repeated on opposing sides, above and below; an outline in one, a solid, three dimensional form in the other. This shape finds its way into many of the paintings, a consoling form, suggesting fullness. Other players in the domestic drama, elongated knives and a warm block of burnt sienna, support the principal motifs. Identifiable spoon and spatula shapes add drama at right. These companion objects hover on a high key ground of pink, framed by shades of the same red. At centre, creating an ambiguous sense of depth is an area close to white, scribed with broken horizontal lines. Its graphic scribing associates it with unseen text - a message yet to be written. Above, at left, refusing recognition, are eight shallow white ellipses under three horizontal bars of red, notations in the artist’s dialogue with her environment. Much of the surface bleeds fine lines of red, apparently accidental, that help contain the image and further evoke the mood of suppurating femininity."

from Elizabeth Butel's Remaking Domestic Lives

"Susan O’Doherty’s three-dimensional works express her feelings regarding women’s roles in today’s world and the inability of many to break free of domestic ties. In her search, she looks to the past to reflect on the nature of this relationship, through the changing tools of domestic work. She, too, treats her subjects with a harsh realism, creating a series of full sized assemblages and smaller works. In these, she scrutinises time-consuming tasks such as washing and ironing, cleaning and cooking. She observes her subject with a clear eye and a sense of humour and is not deflected by the horror and tragedies of illness and death, which were an ever-present part of the challenges faced by households in pre-penicillin days."

from Joanna Capon's Queen of the House