Suzy Evans

31 May - 27 June   Open

Link for more information on the Artist

Slot is proud to present Suzy Evans show Open. It coincides first with National Reconciliation Week and secondly with the re-opening of Sydney galleries following the Covid 19 lockdown.

Ruefully Suzy pointed out that the virus demonstrated one thing – how quickly our government could move, “with the stroke of a pen” as she put it, when the issue was survival. Aboriginal Australia hasn’t been so lucky. Now, while the past should never go without acknowledgement the future offers possibilities, of which reconciliation between the first and subsequent peoples of Australia is the most hopeful.

Suzy Evans is a neighbor. The Aboriginal Art Directory notes, “Suzy Evans is an artist working predominantly in painting, sculpture and printmaking. In addition to her work as a painter she produces a range of designer homewares and stationary under the name Modernmurri.” She was born at North Sydney in 1964 and lives mainly between Moree and Sydney. Another directory notes, “She was a finalist in the 2008 Telstra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards”. Her Heritage Country is Bengerang, NSW, Boomi Garah, NSW, Mungindi, NSW and her language group is Kamilaroi. “Suzy Evans artwork, Night Skies was translated onto banners and light boxes throughout the Sydney during NAIDOC week” and her “inspiration for this painting came from a story told to her by Aunty Rose Fernando from Lightening Ridge. The story goes that the stars in the night sky, known as ‘twinkling stars’ to non-Aboriginal people are known as ‘Laughing Stars’ by Aboriginal people.”

Is it too cheezy to observe that we all live under the same sky? Perhaps. And turning to Suzy’s exquisitely collaged feathers, what is about them that seems precisely Australian? Is it their colour? Perhaps it’s the isolation of the feathers that Suzy describes as a whirling dancers? Or a connection these works on paper seem to make with the bark paintings of northern Australia? Perhaps they hint at a shared heritage, understood more as an emotion than as a narrative, something shared in a way that nationalism isn’t. That would be a reconciliation and one of our societies great achievements.


Tony Twigg