Mundaring Arts Centre | Drawing Space | Suzanne .k Franklin

Drawing Space is an exhibition of works on paper that provides an experience of viewing that’s unhindered by narrative. Each work depicts a sphere, or spheres, and a horizon line only, and they, along with the marks of the medium, become the tools with which to negotiate the complexities of space, time and the emotive power of colour and image. Conventional means with which to apply narrative are negated leaving nothing but a pure experience of what is before, the material substance of the work.

Suzanne .k. Franklin, also known as sue.k., is a West Australian artist with over three decades of art practice behind her. After an absence from working, due to health, a recent discovery of ‘inktense’ pencils has allowed a return to drawing without the physical impact involved when usig the rubber/eraser as means of mark-making while still allowing the aesthetics of those marks typical to her work to be maintained. The subject has become the space within which the object of a simple form resides, it is about light, the depth of space, and navigation of the pictorial plane in the act of viewing.

Works previously produced in drawing and sculpture over a period of 9 years had renewed an approach found in her early work. The subject matter presented in them is far removed from the focus on ‘process’ found in the works of the previous decade and in newer works now in production, in contrast it embraced the delicate subtleties found in the narrative of the image. Coinciding with this shift by the artist is the return to using her birth name Suzanne Franklin in her drawing, sculpture, and painting practices, while sue.k. continues to be used for her video and film practice.