Susan Badcock Biography

Susan has a fascination with subverting the viewer’s expectations by playing with unusual perspectives.  Combining figurative, nature and still lives, Susan uses visual tricks, which demands closer inspection and invites the question:  “How was this created?”

Susan recreates her inner aesthetic world for the viewer by using the photographic medium as the canvas upon which she adds layer upon layer with texture and colour.  Beginning by photographing her subject inspired by a single image, like a bird or a random arrangement of objects. Her world is one that has been tinted with colour. Science and art combine as I work directly on my monochromatic images, adding layers of subtle water-coloured pigments that are sensitively and meticulously swept by brush, or oil-based photo paint that is rubbed and manipulated with cotton.

Since graduating from the Dunedin School of Art, Susan Badcock has opened her own Studio/Gallery, managed an artist residency program, worked as a photographic technician, photography assistant to esteemed Australian photographer, Anne Ferran, and photographic tutor at the Design and Arts College in Christchurch.

Susan’s work has appeared in art exhibitions across the country, most recently in “Road Kill” a solo exhibition at her own Studio in Geraldine.  She helped curate and was involved in a group exhibition, Zero, alongside Anne Ferran and renowned New Zealand photographers Anne Noble and Margaret Dawson.  Susan’s recent photographic work is currently on view at Susan Badcock Studio in Geraldine and Gallery De Novo in Dunedin.

Most recently Susan’s work has been published in a book on Hand-Coloured New Zealand, the Photographs of Whites Aviation by Peter Alsop, has featured in a blog Muybridges Horse and her work is now held in the Aigantighe Art Gallery in their private collection.