Suzanne Cain

Like a forensic pathologist I dissect, examine and put back together. I want the work to bear witness to pain and trauma and piece together fragments of stories to make whole pictures. My sculptures are 3 dimensional drawings, and like a drawing the process becomes a space for visual thinking, an ‘in between’ space which allows the ‘unseen’ to be seen.
Sometimes I will start with materials that have been overlooked, discarded or broken from some type of human intervention. My direct engagement with the process is crucial as the handling, touching, and moving with the materials, shapes the outcome. This physical journey of – finding, collecting, taking apart, examining and re-assembling becomes an absurd jigsaw where each component seems to have a place. Like a drawing my relationship with the surface is central. While the objects have an interior it is the exterior which is given priority.
I want the viewer to come close and think about how each little fragment fits with the others, and relates to each other, and I want to raise questions about the nature of human relationships that result in neglect, trauma or violence. From a distance it does not touch us, it appear random. Only when we are drawn in can we make connections, and understand how certain elements have come together to devastating effect.
While my intention is that the work has a dysfunctional presence, I don’t want to simply comment on the psychopathology of the individual, but the seemingly autistic nature of society as a whole, which is pre-occupied with surface, sensation and image. In our media driven culture of fear and anxiety do we avoid human contact by forging all consuming relationships with objects to combat feelings of emptiness, and neglect?

Biography

Born 1962

Education

2006-2009 BA Fine Art (Sculpture), Wimbledon College of Art
2005-2006 Access Art and Design, University College for the Creative Arts, Farnham
1987-1988 Postgraduate Diploma in Art Psychotherapy, University of Sheffield
1980-1983 BA (Hons) Social Psychology, University of Kent