Exhibition opened by – Craig Donarski (Manager Arts, Culture and Creative Industries at White Bay Power Station. Wangal)
2 Girls and a Bomb – Artist statement
The paintings and sculptures are set in enclosed domestic environments, our safe and supposedly private spaces. With the threat of nuclear warfare, climate change and now AI rapidly changing the world, the work focuses on our interaction with technology, deep fakes and virtual reality; and the concerns, anxieties and uncertainty of what lies ahead.We are coming up to the 80th anniversary of the first atomic bomb ‘Little Boy’ dropped on Hiroshima 6th August 1945 and the second ‘Fat Man’ dropped on Nagasaki 3 days later. Both bombs killed approximately 220,000. Though the Cold War is over the existential threat of annihilation is still very real. The technology that defines our progress is also capable of destroying us. At first radio brought the world into our home, then mid-century TV radically reshaped our world, becoming the primary source of information and entertainment, influencing social norms and behaviours. Now we have the smart phone in our pockets, a super computer with instant access to unlimited information and to each other. Everyone is a photographer, broadcaster and potential influencer. As Andy Warhol said “famous for 15 minutes”. Yet despite this, we’re losing the art of personal connection and interaction. Some people are having more intense relationships with algorithms that have no soul, empathy, hope, sense of loss, memory, touch or love. Rates of depression, anxiety, isolation and loneliness are skyrocketing in young people. On a bus or train you feel alone – virtually every single person glued to their phone. Everyone’s data is being collected by tech corporations. We are constantly surveilled, photographed, filmed, scanned, bugged, stalked and marketed to. George Orwell’s 1984 is more prescient than ever today. These paintings and sculptures are a representation of this digitised, politically fractured and chaotic world we find ourselves in where we’re more and more isolated and distanced from each other.
Craig Donarski opening speech –
“I acknowledge the traditional custodians, the Cammeraygal. We recognise and respect First Nationals people’s ongoing cultural heritage, beliefs and connection..to the land, seas and community. We’d like to pay our respects to Elders, both past and present…and extend that repect to other aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who may be here today. Always was…always will be. My name’s Craig Donarski, currently from White Bay Power Station and Simon Chan from Art Atrium invited me here to Art Atrium 48 to help launch Susan O’Doherty’s latest exhibition ‘2 Girls and a Bomb’. I’ve launched a ton of exhibitions during my seven years as Director at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, including one with Susan…but this is only my second time doing this in a commercial gallery, and again it’s only that it’s Simon Chan’s Art Atrium, that can convince me to make that exception. I have maximum respect for Simon’s unique approach to running a commercial gallery, because he shows maximum respect for the artists that make up the wildly diverse Art Atrium stable. And this may sound like a strange thing to say at a commercial gallery exhibition launch, but Susan O’Doherty doesn’t care if you like her art or not. Susan’s compelled to make it anyway. In a recent chat we had about art, the universe and everything, we discovered we shared a mutual respect and admiration for the art and philosophy of Andy Warhol. Susan quotes him in her artist statement for this exhibition, and we also talked about one of his other pearls of Warholian wisdom: “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they’re deciding, make even more art.” Susan lives out that principal in her practice ..and she probably hates me calling it ‘her practice’ as she doesn’t have a lot of time for the conventions and pretentions of the art world. She just gets shit done. And this collection of paintings and sculptures grapples with some dark and heavy shit! These walls shriek of a collision between AI Bots, Climate Change, Atom Bombs, Atomisation, Alienation, Surveillance and the peculiar cruelties and little suicides of late stage Capitalism. Susan’s Sculptures are surveillance tools, her women in domestic settings shout silent screams, she doesn’t just say something, she HAS to say something. And that’s why I love her work. In these dark times, an artist, like a soldier, without politics, is an assassin. Susan rails against what’s wrong with our world with a restless, twitchy gaze, informed by a dyslexia that drives her to engage with the world and tell her stories in in images, rather than text. There’s an inclusive power in these visual narratives that invites you to participate in the construction and deconstruction of stories great and small. It’s choose your own adventure with Susan as your guide. We’re compelled to come along for the wild ride. It’s not easy listening…or reassuringly decorative lies… but there’s great beauty within it all nevertheless that rewards repeated consideration. So take the time to read Susan’s Artist statement and buy or die or not and we’re all gonna die so let’s really live the ride as best we can until we do. Thank you all for coming and enjoy the show.