Forecast

'....artists are often the barometer of events in the world and can synthesise both socio/ political and environmental concerns with powerful visual encapsulations. Blurring the boundaries of fact and fiction, artists can sometimes deal with the overload of media information and misinformation with clarity and poetic detachment'.
Susan Norrie 2003

'Forecast' 2001 was an exhibition of twelve paintings and two large-scale prints created by Susan Norrie and held at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York, in 2001. As its ominous title suggests, the artworks featured in this show addressed the concept of meteorology, that is, the prediction of weather and other atmospheric phenomena. As well as natural environments 'Forecast' 2001 also infers the guesswork of our economic climate, particularly since the two fields are often intertwined in today's political debate.

Six starkly white monochromatic paintings are lettered with black text and encased within artist-made box frames. These 'readymade' phrases are appropriated from instructions for household products cheaply manufactured for the purposes of chemically countering the elements. Elsewhere two large-scale photo based prints present a before and after image of a hydrogen balloon in a shed which is launched daily to gather information about the weather in Sydney.

These works stress the irony inherent in our society's attempt, but ultimate failure, to truly understand and control the effects of nature through science; the artist's sentiment perhaps validated by the recent spate of unforseen natural disasters occurring in the Asian-Pacific region since 2001.