28 may - 21 june 2025
BACK gallery
Susan Charlton
archive / fever / dreams
Statement
‘In reshaping her creative output, Susan Charlton has become an author of her own archive as creative practice, making visible and material the shifting terrain of this dis/juncture as it is taking place.’
— Dr Liz Bradshaw
archive / fever / dreams emerges from Susan Charlton’s return to Kaurna Yarta/Adelaide in October 2019, after decades away working in film, archives and museums on Gadigal Country in Sydney.
These shifts in time and place have created the conditions for shifts in process and form, as Susan has begun drawing from her writing, curatorial and collecting practices to experiment with found and gifted images and objects.
archive / fever / dreams combines two art-archival series, haunted by the unfolding crises of the 2020s:
* The Hunger: bewitching collage works, splicing together food photography and satellite imagery, to speak of food commodification and degradation; global surveillance and extractivism.
* Thirst Traps: delicately balanced sculptural pieces and illuminations, composed from gifted glass and china from the excess of contemporary living.
Together, in the boutique back room of FELTspace, these confections and constructions conjure up a psychogeography that is equal parts memorial shrine, chemistry lab and museum of consumption.
Artist Bio
Susan Charlton is a writer and curator, artist and archivist, with a decades-long practice in film, archives, museums, libraries and galleries in Sydney. Since returning to Kaurna Yarta/Adelaide in 2019, she has been 2020 ART WORKS Writer-in-Residence, presented by Guildhouse in partnership with City of Adelaide, and has written essays about artists Margaret Dodd, Cynthia Schwertsik, Deidre But-Husaim, Jane Skeer and Sydney based artist-curator Liz Bradshaw. Susan has been Guest & Program Coordinator for three Adelaide Film Festival Expand Labs, leading to the 2022-24 AFF/Samstag $100,000 Expand Moving Image Commissions.
Susan’s Sydney based curatorial projects include the Museum of Love & Protest for the 40th anniversary of Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras; the Unity! Strength! Justice! 100th anniversary exhibition for NSW Teachers Federation; three Feminism & Film programs for Sydney Film Festival 2017, and This Woman is Not a Car: Margaret Dodd exhibition in Sydney and Adelaide.
Susan worked as Creative Producer at NSW State Archives & Records, from 2001-15, creating Vital Signs magazine and curating exhibitions based on the archive’s collection, including co-curating the In Living Memory exhibition and tour of photographs from the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board.
Susan first established her Sydney career as a film distributor, programmer and publicist in the 1980s, and attained her Master of Media Art at College of Fine Arts (UNSW Art, Design & Architecture) in 1995.