Sue Pedley — Reflection on Womanifesto and KinaSthetiC, 2024

By Sue Pedley

Please note that this publication is currently under review and will be subject to changes.

I first heard of Womanifesto from Phaptawan Suwannakudt who I have known since she moved from Thailand to Sydney over twenty five years ago. In 2019 I attended the exhibition and public programs at Cross Art Project for the Archiving Womanifesto: An International Art Exchange, 1990s, curated by Phaptawan, Varsha Nair and Nitaya Ueareeworakul. In 2020 I shared a studio with Phaptawan where we collaborated on an exhibition titled, Line Works: River of the Basin, at Penrith Regional Gallery.

Due to the Covid Pandemic the Womanifesto residency in Thailand was reconfigured into satellite gatherings in the countries where previous participants lived. For the Sydney gathering I was invited to participate along with two other artists—Virginia Hilyard and Helen Grace who are also connected to Phapatwan and Thailand. I invited Kyati Suharto and Charlotte Mungomery to collaborate on a new work exploring drawing, sound and video.

For 'The Womanifesto Way: Sydney Gathers', Kyati Suharto, Charlotte Mungomery and Sue Pedley have been working collaboratively to explore time, light, sound and space. The text that follows is a reflection on their work by Sue Pedley.

The work is contingent on the unfolding of motion, or an action over time or within a cycle.

The sound is layers of field recordings of our voices – in a call and response – mixed with the percussive sounds of found objects; and the ambient sound of the location – birds and distant voices. 

The field recordings are a mix of improvised piano, violin and guitar played and recorded in a sound studio.

The moving Image is an accumulative collage — an extrapolation from the two dimensional into space. 

Over time there is a playful evolution of mark making with paper and graphite, clay and found objects in symphony with the manipulation of  light. It is the result of working at night in an industrial-sized tin shed using slides, a slide projector and objects on an overhead projector. 

The kinetic aspect of the work is the positioning of the data projector overhead as a moving object projecting onto the floor and walls. The editing of the images are circular in format using new editing programs to emphasise the movement within the installation space.

Sue Pedley is a visual artist living in Sydney, she is best known for her multimedia installations, large scale drawings and collaborations. Responsive to the contingencies of the sites where she works, her recurring themes include the environmental degradation of water and its impact on communities and the natural world. Her work also focuses on issues of colonisation including addressing her family history as settlers in Tasmania.