Susan Norrie

(born 1953)

Objet d'art 1988 150cm (59 1/16in). diameter

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Mori Gallery, Sydney (label attached verso)
The Reg Grundy AC OBE and Joy Chambers-Grundy Collection, acquired in 1988

EXHIBITED
Susan Norrie: objet d'art, Mori Gallery, Sydney, 1988, cat. no. 9

LITERATURE
Susan Norrie: objet d'art, Mori Gallery, Sydney, 1988, cat. no. 9 (illus.)
Helen Grace, 'Susan Norrie: "Objet d'art" ', Art & Text, December 1988 - February 1989, pp. 75-78 (illus.)
Vivien Johnson, 'Sue Norrie: Objets d'art', Eyeline 8, March 1989, p. 33


Of the exhibitions that Susan Norrie had the opportunity to see in Paris in 1987-8, it was undoubtedly Le Japonisme at the Grande Palais1 that made an impression on her subsequent development. Although the Musée D'Orsay had opened only a few months before she arrived, she was less fascinated by the impact that Japanese art and in particular ukiyo-e prints had had on Impressionist painting and the various movements that constitute Modernism, and much more drawn to the effect that Japanese decorative arts and in particular, ceramics, textiles and wallpapers had on popular taste. This focus is registered in the very title of the exhibition and each of the works painted in Italy that she presented at Mori Gallery in November 1988 on her return to Sydney: Objet d'art – objects which are not paintings, sculptures, prints or drawings.

Although the works in this exhibition are all paintings, she introduces a variety of techniques that come from other forms, playing with the possibilities of painting and decoration in her use of stencils and screens, of lacquers and cartouches, adding layers and depth and drawing on an opulent palette of pinks, greens and gold. In the florid composition of the works, and in the techniques she uses, she seeks the effects of textiles and wallpapers, evoking a history of domestic space and aspirational taste – a social history as well as a history of painting. Norrie was also working with a book on ikebana floral arrangements that had belonged to her mother, so she is playing a Duchampian game here with expectations of what is and is not art.

In 1988 she suggested the works were dealing with 'social realism' - hence her allusion to middle-class hobbies - and her use of stencils is suggestive of the tradition of katazome, the technique of fabric dyeing, using stencils to create the impression of woven brocades in inexpensive and mass produced textiles. Working in Europe during the Australian Bicentennial year, Norrie responds, in the language of painting, in order to think about influences, appropriation and simulation as aspects of second-degree cultural experience, triangulating links between Australia, Japan and France, each observed from a distance.

The twelve works included in the Objet d'art exhibition were seen only once together. The show was a sell-out and the artist became an art brand, a commodity, and the work effectively disappeared, scattered among private collections and unavailable for public view. Twenty-five years later, it is now possible to consider more systematically the work from this period, its influences, achievements and impact on the evolution of the mature artist's practice and the reasons for her shift beyond painting. In this regard, the continuing place that Japan occupies in her more recent video installation work can be more clearly understood in an historical context.

Helen Grace

1 Le Japonisme, Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris, 1988. Chief curator: Geneviève Lacambre; Galeries nationales du Grande Palais Paris, 17th May – 15th August 1988, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 23rd September – 11th December 1988)