Susan Dorothea White Bibliography

TRANSLATION: Susan White – Multifaceted Work

We know relatively little here about the visual arts in Australia. Yet this continent has some reputable institutes where young people receive a thorough education in the various visual disciplines. The South Australian School of Art and The Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney are two of these institutions. It is not surprising that in these schools, connections are made between the history of European visual art and the local influences, however great the distance may be in kilometres.

Therefore, it is interesting to have the opportunity to see an exhibition of an Australian artist who combines a number of disciplines: painting, etching, lithography, woodcut, and sculpture in bronze, sandstone, and wood. Here we are talking about Susan White (1941) who received a thorough grounding at the above-mentioned academies where the technical aspects were given special emphasis. Susan White certainly knows Europe. She has taken part in a large number of exhibitions in Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, Poland and Yugoslavia. She is now holding her first solo exhibition in Holland. When we read her CV, we see an artistic thread running through her family, both from her mother’s and her father’s side. She herself began to paint landscapes of her local surroundings from the age of sixteen, but even as a child she was rarely without drawing material.

In her current work, one can see the influence of art history, both the Italian Renaissance and early German Gothic sculpture. She has often drawn ideas from history but has also been influenced by developments in 20th Century Art, especially artists such as Max Ernst, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Frida Kahlo, Magritte, Redon, Bonnard, and Gaudi. She also admires primitive sculptures from New Guinea.

Into all this, she has mixed her personal influences from her homeland Australia. The large panel The First Supper – inspired by The Last Supper of da Vinci – is an example of this. The panel shows thirteen women seated at a table in the same arrangement as that of da Vinci. In the place of the Christ figure, there is an aboriginal woman with an aboriginal flag on her T-shirt. The female disciples are of many different races. The work shows clearly Susan White’s thinking about human rights. It should be mentioned here that she sometimes places her many faceted talent at the service of the struggle for human rights.