BIO
Susan Nelson (she/her) is a Canadian multi-media visual artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), Aotearoa (New Zealand). Her practice explores the inter-worlds of materiality and imagination. She has a passion for authentic creative process as a means of revealing the unconscious through playful manipulation of a wide range of materials spanning from bronze, plasticine, wax, and clay to yarn, paper, and hard candy.
She has trained at the Valerie Skemp Decorative Arts Studio (Canada), The Vancouver Academy of Art, The Otago Polytechnic School of Art (Dunedin), Whitecliffe College of Art and Design (Masters in Arts Management 2010), and most recently completed a Postgrad Diploma in Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland (2021).
Exhibitions and Awards
Aotearoa Art Fair, mothermother iteration 20 2023
Lockdown Special, mothermother iteration 14 2022
Unseen, The Tuesday Club 2022
Finalist Molly Morpeth Canaday 3D Art Award, Whakatāne 2012/2022
Elam Grad Show 2021
Finalist Fieldays No. 8 Wire Art Award, Hamilton 2019
Finalist Lysaght Watt Trust Art Award, New Plymouth 2018
Group show (Burned), Depot Artspace 2018
Finalist Hibiscus Bays Art Award, Mairangi Art Centre 2017
Self Portraits Exhibition (part II) from the Wallace Arts Trust Collection, Pah Homestead 2011
Pink Ravens II, solo exhibition, The Lake House Arts Centre 2010
Pink Ravens, solo exhibition, Satellite Gallery 2009
Group Preview Exhibition, Satellite Gallery 2009
Life at Random, solo exhibition, Depot Artspace 2008
Finalist (former) Goldwater Estate Award, Waiheke 2003
Essays
2020: ICU-Intrinsic Creative Universality (presented at Metamodern Symposium, AUT 2023)
2010: Arts Management as Mimetic Irony: maintaining an organic way of knowing