Susan Norrie

Notes from Underground presented two existing installations and one major new project, passenger, made especially for the MCA.

Concerned with what lies beneath the surface of things, Norrie’s work examines the tension between exterior and interior, or visible and unseen forces. Since the mid 1990s she has explored natural and man-made disasters as a metaphor for humanity under crisis. Nuclear issues and environmental themes such as global warming are a feature of her most recent works. These and other related concerns are given expression in Err (1999), which explores the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl and its aftermath; and in Thermostat (2001), which examines temperature change, its indicators and consequences.

passenger (2003) comprises archival material and the artist’s own filmed footage. The image of the cave (New Zealand’s Waitomo Caves) is prominent, suggesting an interior, bunker-like space in which to take shelter from an increasingly perilous world. Images of insect swarms, laboratory experimentation, and air conditioning systems evoke the threat of airborne contagion. ‘Bugs in the system’ has become a constant refrain in our lives, from the threat of physical contamination to the glitches and inefficiencies of bureaucratic systems, to computer viruses.

Susan Norrie
notes from underground