Susie Dureau’s Messages of Consequence, from the series Fathoms, is about the quiet revolution taking place through small acts of reciprocity between humankind and the landscape. Cultivating perceptual openness through sensorial acts of engagement with the landscape is what Australian filmmaker, Rebecca Barry calls ‘subversive enchantment.’ The term speaks to the idea that an act as simple as being curious and looking closely, can have a transformative effect and inform ethical ways to respond to the climate emergency. Multiple acts of enchantment can amount to a revolution. Another creative Aussie voice adds, “From little things, big things grow.”

Susie says of this work: “The coastal landscape (the environment my body is intricately connected to) offers a compelling sensory field for me to explore my being – this is why I am drawn to it. My painting practice engages a method of cultivated curiosity: slowing down and attuning my senses to the landscape, thereby accessing embodied knowledge that arises from thinking and feeling in unison. 

“Nature speaks to me in nonverbal languages of light, colour, texture, temperature and tone; these are also the languages of painting. Painting is a collaboration between the sensory body, the mind and emotion, the material pigments and ground. Through the artworks in this exhibition, I borrow these languages to fathom a bond between myself and the landscape: a bond that is both commonplace and mystifying.”

Signed on the back.