Sue Ninham
Artist Statement // Four winters ago an oracle in Iceland read a rune named Ice which I had randomly picked from her collection. ‘A blizzard of ice needles is cutting at your face and will continue to do so for a long time. Keep working through it. Make art. It will pass’ she said. I thought in that moment I did not need to be told to make art.
I had not understood the meaning of her reading until I saw the finished paintings I have made for this exhibition laid out as one artwork on my studio floor. It is done. It has passed.
My art practice is based in painting, printmaking and textiles. I work intuitively usingimmediate marks, distinctive shapes emerging from memory and experience and colours I physically feel. I capture the state I am in as I do so. My artworks are truthfully reflective in a way I cannot always consciously be with myself.
This artwork incorporates a process of hand-stencilled and monoprinted shapes and splodges overlaid onto a dry, spontaneous, brush-mark.
Sue Ninham paints intuitively, finding the process of non-representation emotionally challenging, and intellectually stimulating. Abandonment and experimentation underpin her creative process. Working in this way she has developed a visual language consisting of form, space and colour that is perhaps reminiscent, but generally ambiguous. Ninham is reluctant to quantify the meaning in her works, preferring the viewer to find their own.
Ninham graduated in 1983 from a Bachelor of Design (Illustration) at the South Australian College of Advanced Education, and completed a Masters of Teaching – Secondary (Visual Arts) at the University of South Australia in 2017. Ninham has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions since 2002 in Australia and internationally, and has undertaken numerous residencies including the NES International Artist Residency, Skagaströnd, Iceland, in 2020. In 2011 Ninham was the winner of the 2012 Adelaide Fringe Poster competition, and in 2008 she won the Winsor and Newton National Watercolour Competition. Ninham is represented by BMGART and her work is held in private and corporate collections in Australia, London, Hong Kong & New Zealand.
Nic Brown writes about Sue Ninham in Neoterica 2024.
Sue Ninham, Icy needles will strike your face, press on (detail), #1, 2023, polymerpaint and ink on Fabriano, 29.7 x 42 cm.
Sue Ninham, Icy needles will strike your face, press on (detail), #23, 2023, polymerpaint and ink on Fabriano, 29.7 x 42 cm.
