Susan Stockwell is an established international artist working across sculpture and installation. Her practice is concerned with questions of materiality, feminism and social history. Susan's art employs the material culture of everyday domestic and manufacturing products, such as toilet paper, recycled computer components, maps and money and she transform these seemingly banal products into compelling artworks. In seeking to reconnect an object’s past, its related history and materiality with contemporary issues, she underscores these materials’ urgent interconnection to collective memories, desires and ecological shortfalls; aspects that expose and challenge inequality and injustice. Susan’s interest in the politics of feminism and the body has led to a series of dress sculpture, the most recent of which is 'Europa' 2023, shown at the Hotel d'Astier Art Centre, Forcalquier, France and at TEFAF Art Fair, Maastricht 2024. 'Territory Dress' 2018 was commissioned for the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, now on permanent display in the exhibition 'Our Colonial Inheritance'. Maps that reference Dutch colonial history are fashioned into the shape of a regal dress, and small model boats and maps of significant territories are concealed inside the neck, womb and train. In 2019 Susan made a film from 'Territory Dress' that explores the sculpture and juxtaposes it with archival film of past seafaring imagery. 'Money Dress' 2010 is currently on show in the exhibition 'Money Talks: Art, Society and Power' at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK. These works are featured in recent books, 'Money Talks: Art Society & Power', 'Our Colonial Inheritance' and '50 Women Sculptors'. Susan Stockwell also offers professional mentoring to aspiring and practising contemporary visual artists and art professionals. She has been a practicing artist for 35+ years and has extensive experience and knowledge in studio, professional and teaching practice. She has exhibited in museums, galleries and alternative spaces worldwide, taken part in collaborative & social practice projects, residencies and received awards, grants and commissions. She is also developing new ways of working, and recently received a DYCP Arts Council of England grant to learn to make prints as a way of of developing new skills and expanding her practice to making it more resilient, commercially viable and adaptable to current contexts. Susan is best known for her site-specific installations and dress sculptures that have been exhibited widely, including; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (2024-25), Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, NL (permanent), Warrington Museum and Art Gallery (2020/21), Royal Shakespeare Company (2015), TATE Modern (2013), Katonah Museum of Art, New York (2012), the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2010, 2005, 2001) and her work is held in international collections including; the University of Bedfordshire, Black Rock Investments (Courtesy of Tag Fine Arts), Yale Centre for British Art, USA, the National Army Museum & V&A Museum, London and The House of European History Brussels. She gained an MA in sculpture from the Royal College of Art in 1993 and lives and works in London, England. www.susanstockwell.co.uk
