Sue Leeming

 

Sue Leeming is an Australian resident born in Taranaki, New Zealand and identifies as New Zealand Maori as well as of English and Scottish descent.

She attended The University of Auckland, Elam School of Fine Art and majored in printmaking graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree and Post-Graduate Diploma in Fine Art in 1995. Sue immigrated to Perth, Western Australia in 1998.

Her current practice is primarily based around painting and drawing mediums and extends ideas of abstraction, landscape, identity and spirituality. She experiments with the physicality of paint and process, allowing the imagery to spring from process. She is interested in plasticity and psychological responses to both cultural and physical environments.

Living in the Peel region has had a significant effect on her sense of place and belonging, the displacement triggering a curiosity to understand how and why the local landscape influences her, particularly in her everyday, and how that resonates with the ‘places’ that inhabit in her mind.

‘The works represent landscape as a material condition that both shapes and is shaped by psychic subjectivities. Leeming develops a means of articulation and system of signification expressive of her unease at the contradiction between her environment and her identity. Her work describes a relationship to place refracted through structures of belonging like personal customs, historical ephemera and recognition of her Maori, English and Scottish heritage’. Alisa Blakeney: South West Art Now 2018

Group exhibitions include 89 Days, Kidogo Arthouse, at the Fenians Fremantle and Freedom Festival, South West Art Now 2018, Bunbury Regional Art Gallery, Minnawarra Art Awards 2018, Curated by Ron Nyisztor; Scene 2018 at Nyisztor Gallery, Melville; 2017 City of Busselton Art Award, the Inaugural Perth Royal Art Award for Landscape, 2017 and The Waterways and Wetlands Art Exhibition at the University of Western Australia in 2010 where she was the winner of the Peoples Choice Award.

https://www.sueleeming.com/

Image courtesy Christophe Canato

ARTIST STATEMENT 'WIP' (Work in Progress) 2018 - Sue Leeming

Sue Leeming is an Australian resident born in Taranaki, New Zealand and identifies as New Zealand Maori as well as of English and Scottish descent.

Her current practice is primarily based around painting and drawing mediums and extends ideas of abstraction, landscape, identity and spirituality. She experiments with the physicality of paint and process, allowing the imagery to spring from process. Living in the Peel region has had a significant effect on her sense of place and belonging, the displacement triggering a curiosity to understand how and why the local landscape influences her, particularly in her everyday, and how that resonates with the places that inhabit her mind.

In her latest work, Sue continues to explore the use of the landscape and its abstraction as a metaphor for the human experience. ‘It is not so much the land that interests her but the lives of the people its presence suggest.’

‘I often find myself travelling through difficult times and in the midst of challenges and struggle, of suffering and loss partnering with joy and hope. I often find there are no words to truly express this state of being, it is a place known to all people and a place that I am denied the ability to articulate.  Sometimes there simply are no words.’

For Sue the mere process of painting is an opportunity to explore the hidden terrain of the heart drawing on intuitive responses to the nature of the medium and synchronicity between the joy of the process and the contemplations of the heart. She is increasingly interested in uncovering those experiences and hidden places of the human psyche, that often become buried, buried alive if you like and awaiting discovery. ‘Often it is the internal landscape of our heart that reveals our true sense of self and belonging than the place from whence we came’. There is often a disconnect between the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we tell others and it’s not that there is a dishonesty in that disconnect, rather, in that very place lies the potency of truth waiting to be discovered. I have no answers, only questions.

The works represent landscape as a material condition that both shapes and is shaped by psychic subjectivities. Leeming develops a means of articulation and system of signification expressive of her unease at the contradiction between her environment and her identity. Her work describes a relationship to place refracted through structures of belonging like personal customs, historical ephemera and recognition of her Maori, English and Scottish heritage. Alisa Blakeney: South West Art Now 2018

Curriculum Vitae

Curriculum-Vitae-SUE-LEEMING-2018_Copy.docx (docx 131kB)

Exhibitions

• Wed 08 Jul - Fri 07 Aug 2020 'Refrain. Reflect. Reset (Art in the Time of Corona)'

  A group exhibition exploring the artists' experience of the  Corona enforced period of lockdown and isolation. Featuring Kathryn Haug, Mardi Crocker, Alex Maciver, Sue Leeming, Wade Taylor, Di Cubitt, Denise Pepper, Britt Mikkelsen, Ayad Alqaragholli, Liam Dee, Marcia Espinosa, Michelle Hyland, Alana McVeigh, Tori Benz, Jarrad Martyn, Shana James, Ellen Norrish and Lindsay Harris.

• Wed 11 Dec - Fri 10 Jan 2020 'Seasonal Salon' - STALA CONTEMPORARY artists (Gallery A)

  A salon hang of some of the works of the incredible artists who exhibit at STALA CONTEMPORARY. Join us to celebrate the amazing art year that was! Works pictured here are just an indication and will be available to cash and carry after Opening Night.

• Wed 13 Nov - Fri 06 Dec 2019 'SYNCHRONICITIES' - Sue Leeming and Britt Mikkelsen (Gallery B)

  WA artists Sue Leeming and Britt Mikkelsen allow process and nature to guide their practice creating moments of synergy in an exhibition of paintings and sculptures that belie their obvious differences. These synchronicities are the still small voice that guide us as we make sense of the nonsensical in a broken world.

• Tue 11 Dec - Sat 12 Jan 2019 'WIP' (Work in Progress) - Group Exhibition (Image courtesy Ian Williams artist)

  STALA CONTEMPORARY is proud to celebrate the opening of its new gallery premises with its inaugural group exhibition 'WIP (Work in Progress' running 11 -29 December 2018. Featuring an exuberant and eclectic assembly of 17 exceptional artists:

  Adam Hisham Ismail/ Alex Maciver/ Anna Sabadini/ Anne Walmsley/ Ayad Alqaragholli/ Denise Pepper/ Di Cubitt/ Ellen Norrish/ Jarrad Martyn/ Kathryn Haug/ Kim Hyunji/ Liam Dee/ Marcia Espinosa/ Michelle Hyland/ Richard Healy/ Sue Leeming/ Wade Taylor

  Affordable/Collectable Art from the West End Arts Precinct to you!

  Image courtesy Ian Williams artist

Works