the work of susan cohn 1980 to 2000
Susan Cohn’s project is elegance. Despite the modernist rigour of her jewellery and tableware, this elegance is not what it seems on first acquaintance, being fundamentally about process rather than appearance. The 'elegance' I have in mind is that of mathematicians and scientists. It prizes the most fitting, the most satisfactory, even hopes for the perfect solution to a problem. Over many years Susan Cohn has set herself to imagine, and then to make, elegant solutions to a series of problems. The longevity of these interests, and the dedicated persistence with which Cohn has pursued them, is revealed in the survey exhibition mounted by the National Gallery of Australia, which is currently touring nationally. techno craft: the title of the exhibition nails Cohn 's standards to her masthead. It foregrounds both her engagement with the latest technical processes and issues- 'techno' comes from the pulsing beat of contemporary electronically mastered dance music- and with the customary practices of the craft workshop. More broadly, the title insists on linking compulsive contemporaneity with the antiquity that is at the heart of the jeweller's work, with people and with society. Cohn is deeply interested in what she calls 'street culture ', shorthand for the rich variety of contemporary cultural objects and activities, whether worn and seen at large, experienced at random, or understood at a more theoretical level as part of the texture of inter-personal communication in a mass society. Perhaps the principal key to Cohn 's work is her fascination with and commitment to the life of her times, to the inventions, conventions and subversions of living culture around her.
This is a very precise cultural environment, perhaps the richest in Australia... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline