SUZANNE ARCHER

VISITING WEDDERBURN, ON THE outskirts of Sydney, the temperature was moving towards forty degrees. Despite the fans, Suzanne Archer’s bush studio felt like an oven – the heat and glare of an Australian summer providing a strange backdrop for a body of work that has been growing darker, denser, ever more gothic in character. The incongruity reflects the temperament of an artist who doesn’t set out to please anyone but herself.

This may be another way of saying ‘an artist who has rarely enjoyed consistent commercial success’, but that’s never been Archer’s priority. Her work develops its own momentum in the studio, regardless of her original intentions. Like Alice