Susie Dureau, Sky River Falling (detail), 2022-23. Oil on canvas, 163 x 132cm. Photo: Jenni Carter Courtesy: the artist and Tweed Regional Gallery, South Murwillumbah, NSW.

In 2022 Sydney-based artist Susie Dureau undertook a residency in the Gallery’s Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio to develop new work for her solo exhibition The River in the Sky.

“I arrived at the Tweed Regional Gallery residency following the 2022 floods in time to witness the impact of the flood on communities in the region. Meteorologists called the weather event ‘a great river in the sky’ because the volume of rain was comparable to a river gathering in the atmosphere. As the sky-river fell and the earth-river rose, obscuring and revealing landscape elements, I witnessed a reordering of the physical landscape: the world turned upside down.

My artworks convey a sense of the intimate entanglements that bind me to the earth and its systems, a subject that is integral to my painting practice and an urgent focus in this time of climate emergency”. – Susie Dureau, 2022.

The Tweed Regional Gallery Artist in Residence Program is generously supported by Mr Tim Fairfax AC. This exhibition is an outcome of the Tweed Regional Gallery – National Art School Masters of Fine Art Residency Award. The partnership between the Gallery and NAS aims to showcase emerging artists in recognition of Margaret Olley’s NAS alumna status.

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