Susan Francis Wiltshire, United Kingdom
Susan Francis makes objects, installations and films that explore meaning making in a culture of instability, fragmentation and change.
​ Belfast born, and currently living in South West England, my work encompasses exhibiting, curating and writing. I work mainly in object, installation and film, making quiet, and at times unsettling artworks that interrogate the strange, the surreal and the poignant embedded in the familiar and the everyday. Past experience includes exhibiting widely internationally and undertaking residencies in France, Poland and the USA. Film work has been screened at various UK galleries and I have curated a number of projects both in galleries and online, often garnering the collaborative and inclusive possibilities digital formats profer. With an interest in the fractured and complex construction of meaning making in the turbulent evolution of our hybrid analogue and digital selves, I have recently completed a Masters degree in Theology, Imagination and Culture which informs recent work. ​ Themes are explored through film but also, essentially, through the making process, compilations and assemblages exploring the deep entanglement of object and material with the psychological and metaphysical landscape we inhabit. Together they converge and collide in conversation with one another, transparency and translucency emerging regularly as a vehicle for the metaphysical but also the fragile, the fleeting and the barely there.
​My work displays a sympathy for our daily, imperfect, and fragile attempts to make sense of the human condition, ever hopeful that we will bring order to what persists as chaos.
Artwork
Nothing is Nothing, Biodegradable PLA, cotton thread, 2022
Vibrant Cultivars, Perspex box, cotton wool balls, florists' wire, latex, unfired clay, acrylic, 2020
A New Heaven and a New Earth, Diorama with light and magnifying screen - mixed small objects, sculptures and models including small baby, 2020