Susan O’Doherty
Susan O’Doherty is a contemporary Australian artist known for assemblage, painting, collage, sculpture, and installation. She appropriates and recycles everyday materials, textiles and household implements, utilizing these discarded found objects to create a myriad of provocative, ironic, thought provoking and at times sinister works commenting on gender, consumerism, violence, memory and history.
Born in Brisbane, Australia in 1960, O’Doherty studied film prosthetics and make-up in Sydney, beginning her early career in film and theatre. In the mid-90s, she was working as an artist, painting in figurative and abstract idioms, expanding her practice with a variety of media in the early 2000s to include mixed media assemblage, textile sculpture, and collage. Susan exhibited 450 painted portraits of visual arts practitioners titled ‘900 Eyes, Domestic Lives’ in 2008-9 at Manly, Tweed River, and Maitland regional galleries. She participated in Macquarie University Gallery’s ‘Reimag(in)ing SomaSex’ and in ‘Diarama’ at Wollongong Art Gallery.
In 2014-17, she collaborated on the major Regional Gallery Touring Exhibition ‘Moving House’ with artist husband Peter O’Doherty, incorporating assemblage and painting of the various rooms of the houses that she lived in as a child.
Marking the centenary of the Anzac Gallipoli landing, the artist participated in commemorative exhibitions ‘Contemporary Gallipoli’, ‘Your Friend the Enemy’ and ‘Wept, Wait and Be Worthy’ at Macquarie University Gallery, S.H. Ervin Gallery, The Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, and regional galleries in Bathurst, Goulburn, Cowra, Hawkesbury, and Grafton NSW. Her exhibition ‘Pinned to the Wall’, looking at sexual politics, domestic violence, and consumerism, traveled to Ballarat, Sydney, and Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery NSW in 2017-2018. In 2021, a series of her textile sculptural heads referring to hospital staff was included in a group exhibition ‘A Conspicuous Object – the Maitland Hospital’ at Maitland Regional Art Gallery.
O’Doherty was selected for the 8th Beijing International Art Biennale in 2019, also participating that year in the Art Central Hong Kong art fair and at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre for the Everyday Madonna exhibition focusing on contemporary depictions of the Madonna and Child. Susan has been a finalist in the Glover Art Prize, Portia Geach Memorial Award, Salon Des Refusés, Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, Redlands Art Award, Mosman Art Prize, the National Still Life Award, and KAAF art prize. Her works are in the collections of the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, the City of Sydney, Smorgon Collection, and Regional Art Galleries throughout NSW. The artist currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia.
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