Whatever the metamorphosis of painting, whatever the support frame, we are always faced with the same question: what is happening, there? Whether we deal with canvas, paper or wall, we deal with a stage where something is happening (and if, in some forms of art, the artist deliberately intends that nothing should happen, even this is an event, an adventure).
Roland Barthes.
Consisting of large paintings Mis-en-scene outlines the critical problem explored in Baker’s research, which can be described by the following anecdote:
Woody Allen tells the story of the man who went to a psychiatrist and said, “doc, I have a problem, my brother thinks he’s a chicken!†the psychiatrist says, “that’s terrible, why don’t you turn him in?†the man replies, “well, I would, Doc, but I need the eggs!â€
And in this case, according to Su Baker, the question that might be asked is why paint? Or indeed, why make art at all? Is it that we still need the eggs? Perhaps we are still party to some collective madness that possesses us and to which we feel some filial loyalty.
Su Baker has produced a significant body of new work in Mis-en-scene to explore a new aesthetic of painting in a post-cinematic, post-art, post-critical age. As Baker says herself this is an impossible but ecstatic ambition. This new work can be seen as ciphers of subjectivities, residual deposits of, in this case, pictorial stylistic playthings. This is not a return to an anti-intellectual essentialism or reductive formalism, or to the abandonment of narratives, nor does it propose a single orthodoxy – but, on the contrary, it proposes to embrace a free-form complexity, multiple genres and eclectic reference points, it aims to invest in the silent, visual and libidinal economy of painting with a sense of intellectual gravitas, to empower the scopophilic enjoyment of making and looking with an underlying seriousness – indeed, a serious pleasure. The ‘serious pleasure’ of making and looking and what could be more serious than that.
Originally from Western Australia, Baker’s work emerged from an increasingly and deliberately self-conscious approach to painting that came after the peak of the ‘post object’ preoccupations of the 1970s. Her first solo exhibition was in 1983 at Galerie Düsseldorf in Perth and she has since exhibited regularly in Perth and Sydney, participated in the 5th Construction Process event in Poland and was winner of the 2000 VACB Studio residency, Milan Studio, Italy. In September 2001, Su Baker exhibited with her father (Allan Baker) at Galerie Düsseldorf.
Baker has been the recipient of several grants including, most recently the New Work, VACB 2004. She is represented in the collections of various state galleries, university art collections, Artbank and private collections.
Su Baker is currently undertaking research for a Doctorate of Creative Arts, at Curtin University, due for completion in 2004. Baker completed Bachelor of Fine Art at the Western Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT, now Curtin University) during the late 1970s and completed her Graduate Diploma in Education in 1980. She then undertook postgraduate study at Sydney College of the Arts in 1983 and worked there as the Senior Lecturer in Painting until 2000. Baker is currently Head of School of Art, at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne.
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