The Flowering of Art Nouveau, a talk by the artist Susan Finlay

About

Susan Finlay always paints in acrylic on shop-bought, pre-stretched canvases, while her more recent ceramic works were built by hand using cheap school clay. Both are intended to highlight the use of ‘poorer' and hence ‘stagier' materials, as well as the repetition of certain art nouveau motifs which reoccur across both the two and three-dimensional elements of her practice. Her work is very much concerned with the feminine (what Adolf Loos would term erotic) aspects of certain early modernisms, and in particular those which may have previously been dismissed as minor due to their engagement with graphic and/or sculptural elaboration, capriciousness and play. Simultaneously, the work acknowledges the construction of this, so-called, decadence, and in so doing consciously prevent the viewer from fully indulging in the worlds that it alludes to . . . This talk centres on Susan Finlay's work from the previous three year years and its relationship to art nouveau. This event is free and is part of the Art Talks and Tea series curated by resident artist Caterina Lewis in partnership with the Bermondsey Project.