Susanna CASTLEDEN
Born
1968
Nationality
English
Gender
Female
Artist statement
Arising from an ongoing inquisitiveness about how the world is encountered and represented, Susanna is interested in how mobility changes the way we see and perceive the world, and how this has necessitated alternative ways of visualising our position within it. Recent projects explore mobility and mapping specifically associated with leisure travel, examining the phenomenon of mobility and what it means to be part of a world that, until 2020, was seemingly increasingly on the move.
Travel, and working on the move, has been core to Susanna’s past projects. Utilising the embodied experience of displacement, distance and inversion, works have been created in remote locations in an attempt to reflect these experiences. Antipodal sites such as New Zealand and Spain, and Bermuda and Perth have been selected as field-based studios on opposite sides of the world, where the works are often made directly at the sites. Artworks created in these distant locations - on beaches, cliff faces and shorelines - attempt to capture and bring together the opposing, yet somehow familiar, experiences of being on the other side of the world.
Throughout Susanna’s practice the artworks are often informed and shaped by the atmosphere and affective nature of the sites in which they were made. The parallel practices of printmaking, photography and documentary performance are often entwined, generating works that have a residue of the spaces of their production. Labour and manual process of construction are important in both the formation and reception of the works, where marks from sunscreen or sweat, or bruises in paper caused by high winds remain an integral part of the art work. Ultimately, the works aim to reflect the material and atmospheric qualities of the sites and objects in, and from, which they were made. In turn, these objects and locations intrinsically relate to and reflect the world in which we live.
For Susanna, cruise ships, caravans and airplanes have been signifiers of a mobile world; she has been drawn to these objects as a way to investigate the various registers of movement and stillness encountered through travel. Working in aircraft boneyards, shipping ports, airports, and on the road, the process of frottage - a method of recording an object or site at 1:1 scale – has been utilised to capture the surface of these stationary objects. As the global pandemic unfolded in early 2020, the acuteness of immobility has been brought into view for many, and the poignancy of Susanna’s previous works in airplane boneyards now enfolds with visions of grounded airplanes and retired cruise ships lined up in scrapping docks. This recent contraction in the scale of global mobility has prompted new perspectives and approaches in Susanna’s practice, ones that sharpen the inquisitiveness towards new and unanticipated ways of encountering and representing the world.
Travel, and working on the move, has been core to Susanna’s past projects. Utilising the embodied experience of displacement, distance and inversion, works have been created in remote locations in an attempt to reflect these experiences. Antipodal sites such as New Zealand and Spain, and Bermuda and Perth have been selected as field-based studios on opposite sides of the world, where the works are often made directly at the sites. Artworks created in these distant locations - on beaches, cliff faces and shorelines - attempt to capture and bring together the opposing, yet somehow familiar, experiences of being on the other side of the world.
Throughout Susanna’s practice the artworks are often informed and shaped by the atmosphere and affective nature of the sites in which they were made. The parallel practices of printmaking, photography and documentary performance are often entwined, generating works that have a residue of the spaces of their production. Labour and manual process of construction are important in both the formation and reception of the works, where marks from sunscreen or sweat, or bruises in paper caused by high winds remain an integral part of the art work. Ultimately, the works aim to reflect the material and atmospheric qualities of the sites and objects in, and from, which they were made. In turn, these objects and locations intrinsically relate to and reflect the world in which we live.
For Susanna, cruise ships, caravans and airplanes have been signifiers of a mobile world; she has been drawn to these objects as a way to investigate the various registers of movement and stillness encountered through travel. Working in aircraft boneyards, shipping ports, airports, and on the road, the process of frottage - a method of recording an object or site at 1:1 scale – has been utilised to capture the surface of these stationary objects. As the global pandemic unfolded in early 2020, the acuteness of immobility has been brought into view for many, and the poignancy of Susanna’s previous works in airplane boneyards now enfolds with visions of grounded airplanes and retired cruise ships lined up in scrapping docks. This recent contraction in the scale of global mobility has prompted new perspectives and approaches in Susanna’s practice, ones that sharpen the inquisitiveness towards new and unanticipated ways of encountering and representing the world.
Extended essay
Arising from an ongoing inquisitiveness about how the world is encountered and represented, Susanna is interested in how mobility changes the way we see and perceive the world, and how this has necessitated alternative ways of visualising our position within it. Recent projects explore mobility and mapping specifically associated with leisure travel, examining the phenomenon of mobility and what it means to be part of a world that, until 2020, was seemingly increasingly on the move.
Travel, and working on the move, has been core to Susanna’s past projects. Utilising the embodied experience of displacement, distance and inversion, works have been created in remote locations in an attempt to reflect these experiences. Antipodal sites such as New Zealand and Spain, and Bermuda and Perth have been selected as field-based studios on opposite sides of the world, where the works are often made directly at the sites. Artworks created in these distant locations - on beaches, cliff faces and shorelines - attempt to capture and bring together the opposing, yet somehow familiar, experiences of being on the other side of the world.
Throughout Susanna’s practice the artworks are often informed and shaped by the atmosphere and affective nature of the sites in which they were made. The parallel practices of printmaking, photography and documentary performance are often entwined, generating works that have a residue of the spaces of their production. Labour and manual process of construction are important in both the formation and reception of the works, where marks from sunscreen or sweat, or bruises in paper caused by high winds remain an integral part of the art work. Ultimately, the works aim to reflect the material and atmospheric qualities of the sites and objects in, and from, which they were made. In turn, these objects and locations intrinsically relate to and reflect the world in which we live.
For Susanna, cruise ships, caravans and airplanes have been signifiers of a mobile world; she has been drawn to these objects as a way to investigate the various registers of movement and stillness encountered through travel. Working in aircraft boneyards, shipping ports, airports, and on the road, the process of frottage - a method of recording an object or site at 1:1 scale – has been utilised to capture the surface of these stationary objects. As the global pandemic unfolded in early 2020, the acuteness of immobility has been brought into view for many, and the poignancy of Susanna’s previous works in airplane boneyards now enfolds with visions of grounded airplanes and retired cruise ships lined up in scrapping docks. This recent contraction in the scale of global mobility has prompted new perspectives and approaches in Susanna’s practice, ones that sharpen the inquisitiveness towards new and unanticipated ways of encountering and representing the world.
Travel, and working on the move, has been core to Susanna’s past projects. Utilising the embodied experience of displacement, distance and inversion, works have been created in remote locations in an attempt to reflect these experiences. Antipodal sites such as New Zealand and Spain, and Bermuda and Perth have been selected as field-based studios on opposite sides of the world, where the works are often made directly at the sites. Artworks created in these distant locations - on beaches, cliff faces and shorelines - attempt to capture and bring together the opposing, yet somehow familiar, experiences of being on the other side of the world.
Throughout Susanna’s practice the artworks are often informed and shaped by the atmosphere and affective nature of the sites in which they were made. The parallel practices of printmaking, photography and documentary performance are often entwined, generating works that have a residue of the spaces of their production. Labour and manual process of construction are important in both the formation and reception of the works, where marks from sunscreen or sweat, or bruises in paper caused by high winds remain an integral part of the art work. Ultimately, the works aim to reflect the material and atmospheric qualities of the sites and objects in, and from, which they were made. In turn, these objects and locations intrinsically relate to and reflect the world in which we live.
For Susanna, cruise ships, caravans and airplanes have been signifiers of a mobile world; she has been drawn to these objects as a way to investigate the various registers of movement and stillness encountered through travel. Working in aircraft boneyards, shipping ports, airports, and on the road, the process of frottage - a method of recording an object or site at 1:1 scale – has been utilised to capture the surface of these stationary objects. As the global pandemic unfolded in early 2020, the acuteness of immobility has been brought into view for many, and the poignancy of Susanna’s previous works in airplane boneyards now enfolds with visions of grounded airplanes and retired cruise ships lined up in scrapping docks. This recent contraction in the scale of global mobility has prompted new perspectives and approaches in Susanna’s practice, ones that sharpen the inquisitiveness towards new and unanticipated ways of encountering and representing the world.
