Red Gate Resident January 2009
Travelling the Unfamiliar
For Australian artist Susan Andrews, travelling by bike, bus, taxi and subway around an unfamiliar city can be both exciting and bewildering. Experiencing the unfamiliar, we are opened to new worlds.
A map is required in all instances when travelling in a foreign environment: first in the search, and location of where one is heading then a decision is made regarding how to navigate towards is the best way in proceeding forward. Our perception of space, time and distance is conditioned from our own daily routine in our own familiar environment. When we step into another unfamiliar space our perceptual sense of time and distance and in some instances our sense of scale appears to be challenged.
While maps can inform us of where we are in space they also denote boundaries, borders; the edges of eroding land mass and the creeping tentacles of the city freeways. Weather maps inform us of the prevailing winds, rain and sun and the associated daily temperatures. While we relied once on paper maps to map the earth and sky we now have satellite maps that can give us a ‘birds eye view’ of distance, we can zoom in on a computer and catch close-ups of land mass, flat planes and meandering rivers.
Whilst in Beijing for a month-long Red Gate Artist Residency, Susan completed a series of works on rice paper that deal with the concept of mapping the unfamiliar. The works reference maps in the use of linear explorations of boundaries and subtle masses of form.Susan will develop these works back in Sydney into an ongoing series. Susan is currently a Lecturer in Painting and Drawing both at the
