Born in 1955, Susan Derges has had solo exhibitions in London, New York, Tokyo and San Francisco. She has had group shows at various locations including the Hayward Gallery, the Photographers Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Luxembourg Museum in Paris, the Angel Adams Centre for Photography in San Francisco, the Museum for Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Yokohama Museum of Art in Japan.
She is also represented in several of the above collections.
Characteristically, Derges' work has involved camera-less, lens-based, photographic processes, resulting in unique pieces.
MHW
EVOLUTION OF FORM
Susan Derges
Biography
Susan Derges is an artist living and working in Devon and a research member of the "Coast Group", University of Plymouth, where she is a lecturer in Media Arts. Her photographic and video work has been exhibited internationally and a touring exhibition of her photograms is currently on show at Kettleís Yard, Cambridge. A publication titled "River Taw" accompanying the show is available through Michael Hue-Williams Fine Art, London.
Abstract
What is the relationship between inner and outer, mental and physical, subjective and objective experience? If they are all part of one continuous (and creative) process how can this be visualised? What are the metaphors offered by science as well as those underlying scientific ideas about the mystery of form (and thought forms even) coming into being and the whole process of embodiment.
My work has been a continuing enquiry into some of these questions - beginning with the hope that science might provide absolute answers or solutions, it has become more concerned with the place of the subjective self in the world, with the notion of an observer interactive reality and with creative emergence.
The photographic image parallels the scientific gaze in the way that it can slice up the world for scrutiny and as evidence, but it also has the potential to cultivate a subjective response - by which the world is experienced as a whole and in which intrinsic value and mutual respect are possible.
