Uss Gallery is proud to announce Antoinette Suiter as Spring/Summer Artist-in-Residence in our Satellite Space Astra 5.
Artist Statement:
“I’m currently investigating notions of the term nostomania in my practice. An outmoded psychological term used to characterize a harmfully extreme form of nostalgia; an unremitting desire to return home or go back to a familiar place exemplifies the affliction. A hyper-fear, horror, and obsession with the objects of home also characterize nostomania. Nostalgia in these circumstances is pushed to a perilous degree, and out of the control of the individual experiencing it.
In terms of materials, I predominantly work with ubiquitous domestic supplies such as carpet, PVC pipe, and wooden framing, to emphasize the uncanny discomfort within the familiar. I use dated materials and patterns in combination with broader signifiers to discuss the simultaneity of memory with the present, and the repetition and trends within a single person’s lifespan. The importance of scale and proximity to the viewer’s own body is also something I’m actively investigating as a significant factor in an encounter with the uncanny.
I view my work as a movie for one; an implied larger narrative abbreviated, displaced, and contextualized within the structure of yet another narrative. The objects I see as de-contextualized movie props in terms of form and subject matter, but also self-contained units complete in their own existence rather than secondary forms remaining from a larger whole. This idea of a world within a world, as well as the intersection of “high art” with the cheap sensationalism of pulp, pervades my work.”
Astra 5 Satellite Space (Designed by Chris Staats)