Dresses

Susan began her series of Dress Sculptures with Coffee Dress in 1999. These works cross the boundaries between art, fashion & craft, questioning our need to separate and categorise. Made from antiquated maps and currency, stained coffee filters, plastic, and textiles, their beauty, tactility, and finely crafted detail draw the viewer in to see the deeper, layered conceptual questioning and meanings in the works.

Susan’s interest in the politics of feminism and the body led her to make this dress series, including: Europa 2023, in the exhibition Cassinis Map at the Archives Nationales, Paris (until 1st Feb 2027); Colonial Dress, 2008, in the exhibition Postcolonial? at the House of European History, Brussels (until 14th March 2027); Territory Dress, 2018, commissioned by and on permanent display in Our Colonial Inheritance at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam; Highland Dress 2020 showing in Collateral Drawing 6 at APT Gallery, London, October 2026; Money Dress in P.O.C. Collection, Brussels, and others.

"Growing up, my mother made our clothes, and I knew how to read dressmaking patterns before I could read; sewing was my first language. When I was sixteen, I won a prize for the best-made dress in my school; I have been making dresses in one form or another ever since. Coffee Dress was an extension of this, but it was an artwork, not to be worn, so a similar method but with a different aim and outcome; I was subverting clothing, maps, and money. At this time, I also began working with maps & money.”

Quote from an interview with Daan Van Dartel, Curator of Textiles, at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, NL, 2018.